Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta stunned the tech world by handing a 24-year-old AI phenom, Matt Deitke, a jaw-dropping $250 million deal. The offer came after Deitke initially turned down a $125 million four-year package, as reported by the New York Times. Zuckerberg doubled down with one of the largest corporate paydays in history — reportedly paying Deitke up to $100 million in the first year alone — sealing the deal after a personal meeting.

Deitke’s rise in the artificial intelligence space has been meteoric. After exiting a PhD program at the University of Washington, he joined Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and led the development of Molmo, an AI tool that interprets images, sound, and text. The project positioned him perfectly for the multimodal AI Meta is chasing. Later, in November, he co-founded Vercept, a startup focused on autonomous AI agents. The company, which raised $16.5 million with backing from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, employed just ten people.

Deitke’s work on 3D datasets and embodied AI models caught the attention of the global research community. He earned an Outstanding Paper Award at NeurIPS 2022, a rare honor given to only a handful of researchers out of over 10,000 submissions. His rapid ascent illustrates the intense value placed on AI expertise today. “When computer scientists are paid like professional athletes, we have reached the climax of the Revenge of the Nerds,” said MIT economist David Autor.

Inside Meta’s Billion-Dollar AI Arms Race

Mark Zuckerberg Meta
Deitke initially turned down Meta’s offer before CEO Mark Zuckerberg doubled it.

Meta’s acquisition of Deitke is part of a broader push to dominate AI. Reports suggest the company has shelled out over $1 billion assembling an elite AI team. Among the headline hires is Ruoming Pang, former leader of Apple’s AI models team, who accepted a package worth over $200 million.

Meta’s investments are reflected in its bottom line. On its latest earnings call, the company disclosed it will boost capital expenditures to $72 billion in 2025 — up $30 billion from the previous year. Zuckerberg justified the massive spend by emphasizing the need to recruit top-tier researchers to build the infrastructure for superintelligent systems. “There’s just an absolute premium for the best and most talented people,” he told investors.

A Meta spokesperson pointed back to Zuckerberg’s investor comments when asked for further details.

Concerns Over Inequality and AI’s Impact on Jobs

While some hail this competition as a driver of innovation, critics warn of widening inequality and social risks. Ramesh Srinivasan, a UCLA professor and founder of the university’s Digital Cultures Lab, said the immense sums given to elite researchers stand in contrast to the thousands of layoffs at companies like Meta. He told the New York Post that jobs like content moderation are being wiped out and replaced by AI systems developed by the very recipients of these large payouts.

Srinivasan, who advises U.S. policymakers and hosts the Utopias podcast, argues that this model of AI growth actively disenfranchises the workers whose efforts trained the AI models. “This is cognitive task automation,” he explained, referencing work like HR, admin, legal, and even Uber driving. “If data can be collected on a job, it can be mimicked by a machine.”

He dismissed universal basic income as an incomplete solution. “Yes, UBI gives people money, but it doesn’t address the fundamental issue: no one is being paid for the data that makes these AI systems possible.”