Meta eyed Perplexity before $14B Scale AI deal
21 Jun 2025

Meta Platforms, the tech giant run by Mark Zuckerberg, was in talks to acquire artificial intelligence (AI) search start-up Perplexity AI.

The discussions were held before Meta's multi-billion-dollar investment in Scale AI, according to Bloomberg.

However, the two companies were unable to reach an agreement and ultimately decided against pursuing the deal.

Meta tried to recruit Perplexity's CEO
Strategic moves

The talks with Perplexity came before Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, which gave it a 49% stake in the data-labeling start-up.

Along with this, Meta also tried to recruit Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas for its new "superintelligence" team.

This team is dedicated to building more powerful AI systems, highlighting Zuckerberg's strategy of using deals and major hires to stay competitive in the AI race.

What is Perplexity?
Market position

Founded in 2022, Perplexity has become a leading start-up leveraging generative AI to reinvent core internet services.

The company is competing with Google's parent company, Alphabet, by providing an AI tool that summarizes search results, cites sources for its answers, and helps users refine their queries for optimal responses.

Perplexity recently raised funds at a valuation of $14 billion.

Zuckerberg is trying to recruit top AI talent
Talent acquisition

Zuckerberg, frustrated with the slow pace of Meta's AI development, is aggressively trying to recruit top AI talent from across the industry with lucrative pay packages.

The tech giant has already hired Scale AI's former CEO Alexandr Wang and researchers from Google DeepMind and Sesame AI.

However, not everyone is keen on joining Meta. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed this week that some of his employees were offered $100 million signing bonuses by Meta, but they declined to join.

Meta still in talks with Nat Friedman
Recruitment efforts

Meta is still in talks with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman to recruit him for its new team.

The company is also trying to hire Daniel Gross, the CEO of Safe Superintelligence, a research lab founded by ex-OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.

Additionally, Meta has had early talks for a computing deal where Safe Superintelligence would use its data center infrastructure.