Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite move? Copy, poach, repeat. It made him one of the richest people on the planet. Now, he’s dusting off that playbook for his biggest challenge yet: the AI race. Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is on a hiring and buying spree, throwing eye-watering sums at top AI researchers and startups in a last-ditch effort to catch up to OpenAI, Google, and upstart rivals like DeepSeek. It’s a full-court press to convince the tech world and investors that Meta still matters in the AI race. But here’s the twist: Zuckerberg is raiding everyone else’s. THE MOVES In the past few weeks, Zuckerberg AI team has: Poached talent like Alexander Wang (Scale AI co-founder) to lead a new AI Superintelligence Unit Offered $100 million+ packages to top researchers at OpenAI and Google (many said no), according to OpenAI’s CEO. Snapped up startups or tried to — from Scale AI to PlayAI, which clones human voices for natural conversations Talked with AI darlings like Perplexity AI, Rybway, and even Safe Superintelligence So far, Meta has nabbed several big names: Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, Xiaohua Zhai (formerly OpenAI), and others like Trapit Bansal and Jack Rae, who left Google DeepMind. The company also reportedly tried (and failed) to lure high-profile AI researchers like OpenAI’s Noam Brown and Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu., Artificial Intelligence Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Win AI by Copying Everyone Smarter Than Him Meta’s CEO is trying to buy his way to the front of the AI race, poaching top talent and eyeing startups., Mr. Zuckerberg demoted Meta’s vice president in charge of generative A.I. He then invested $14.3 billion in the start-up Scale AI and hired Alexandr Wang, its 28-year-old founder..