On June 20, 2025, a cluster of reports laid out Meta’s June AI expansion strategy in full: before deciding to put $14.3 billion into Scale AI, Mark Zuckerberg had considered buying AI search company Perplexity outright, and Meta had also tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence — the startup founded by Ilya Sutskever, valued at $32 billion — and was turned down.
When it could not buy the companies, it moved to buy the people. CNBC and TechCrunch reported Meta was in talks to bring in Safe Superintelligence co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross along with former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and to take a stake in their venture firm NFDG. This is a talent war fought with offers instead of acquisitions, and every move happened within a single month.
The timing of the leaks tells the rhythm: Bloomberg broke the Perplexity talks, CNBC and TechCrunch added the SSI attempt and the hiring details, and The Verge pulled the threads into a single picture.
The Perplexity talks that fell apart
Bloomberg reported first that Meta had discussed acquiring Perplexity before finalizing its investment in Scale AI. CNBC added the sourcing detail: the negotiations went nowhere — one person said the talks were “mutually dissolved,” while another said Perplexity walked away from a potential deal.
Perplexity declined to comment and Meta did not immediately respond. In hindsight, the final arrangement — $14.3 billion for a 49 percent, non-voting stake in Scale AI — reads as Meta’s step back from “buy the whole company”: no controlling stake, but influence and a talent pipeline. Perplexity’s own leverage — a fresh round in progress — made independence the obvious choice.
The $32 billion SSI attempt
The second track was even bolder. TechCrunch reported Meta tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, the startup co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, reportedly valued at $32 billion as of April 2025. Sutskever rejected the approach.
After the rejection, the focus shifted to people: SSI co-founder and CEO Daniel Gross and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman were in talks to join Meta. The Verge’s Command Line newsletter reported the two would co-lead the Meta AI assistant under Alexandr Wang, and that Meta would receive a stake in NFDG, their venture firm — whose portfolio happens to include Perplexity and Character.AI. Poaching the investors and the portfolio in one move is the most elegant play of this talent war. TechCrunch noted The Information first reported the hiring talks, and Meta’s interest in the pair was never just about titles: their portfolios and networks map the AI search and application layer.
All three startups chose to keep growing
The most telling detail in The Verge’s roundup: none of the talks — with Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, Perplexity, or Safe Superintelligence — progressed to the formal offer stage, stalled by disagreements over price and strategy.
More importantly, all three founders chose the same path: raise more money at higher valuations. Sutskever had just raised a couple of billion dollars for SSI, with both Meta and Google among its investors; Murati had also just raised a couple of billion; Perplexity was raising around $500 million. Selling the company for a check clearly looked worse than staying at the table and raising the stakes. By mid-2025, the talent premium had outrun the M&A market itself.
A talent war fought with offers instead of deals
The backdrop to all of this is Meta’s aggressive June recruiting spree: first bringing in Wang from Scale with a $14.3 billion deal — The Verge notes Wang left Scale on a Friday and was in Meta’s office by Monday, recruiting — then fielding nine-figure and even ten-figure compensation packages for top researchers. Sam Altman pushed back publicly, saying Meta had offered signing bonuses as high as $100 million but that “none of our best people” were leaving OpenAI for Meta.
For the industry, these reports mark a new expansion playbook: when targets are too expensive to buy and founders refuse to sell, acquisition gives way to hiring plus minority stakes. Every Meta move around June 20, 2025 — buying into Scale, trying to buy SSI, pursuing SSI’s CEO, negotiating with Gross and Friedman — is another shot from the same script. The era of acquisitions is not over; it has been replaced by acquiring the people. For other incumbents the playbook travels: rather than waiting for reasonably priced targets, go straight for the key people and their portfolios — Meta simply flipped its cards first.
Sources
- The Verge: Meta held talks to buy Thinking Machines, Perplexity, and Safe Superintelligence
- TechCrunch: After trying to buy Sutskever’s $32B AI startup, Meta looks to hire its CEO
- CNBC: Meta discussed buying Perplexity before the Scale AI deal
- Bloomberg: Meta discussed buying Perplexity before investing in Scale AI
AI-assisted summary compiled from the sources above, reviewed by a human before publishing.