The Most Expensive Hire In AI History Finally Talks

Alex Wang has barely said a word in public since Mark Zuckerberg paid a fortune to bring him in and put him in charge of Meta's artificial intelligence push. 10 months later, the co-founder of Scale AI sits down with Ashlee Vance and Kylie Robison for his first long interview to explain what he has actually been doing inside Meta Superintelligence Labs, why Llama 4 was off course, and how his team rebuilt Meta's entire frontier model stack from scratch in nine months. The conversation cuts through a lot of the noise from last summer's recruiting frenzy. Wang lays out the structure of MSL and the now infamous TBD lab, his three principles for catching the frontier (compute per researcher, talent density, and very big research bets), and what the day to day actually looks like with Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and chief scientist Shengjia Zhao. He also takes on the personal stuff: the cost of leaving Scale, the public swipes from Sam Altman and Yann LeCun, the soup rumors, and the perception that Meta simply bought its way back into the AI race. Wang also walks through MuseSpark's surprising token efficiency, why he calls the model an appetizer rather than the entrée, where Meta lands on open source after keeping this release closed, the Manus deal and US versus China geopolitics, the new humanoid robotics acquisition, and a long final stretch on health superintelligence with CZI, brain computer interfaces, model welfare, and why he thinks the path to paradise on earth runs through superintelligence. About the Hosts Ashlee Vance is a journalist, author, and filmmaker best known for his New York Times bestselling books, including the biography of Elon Musk and When The Heavens Went on Sale. He spent years at Bloomberg Businessweek covering Silicon Valley, space, and the people building the future, where he also created and hosted the Emmy-nominated series Hello World. His documentary work includes Wild Wild Space for HBO and Don't Die for Netflix. Now he runs Core Memory, a media company telling stories about scientists, inventors, and startups changing the world, from biotech labs to factory floors to the edge of space. Kylie Robison is a technology journalist and co-host of the Core Memory podcast. She previously covered artificial intelligence and the tech industry as a reporter at The Verge and Wired. Links Meta Superintelligence Labs and Meta AI research: https://ai.meta.com Mark Zuckerberg's "Personal Superintelligence" memo: https://about.fb.com/news/2025/07/per... Scale AI: https://scale.com Manus: https://manus.im Chan Zuckerberg Initiative: https://chanzuckerberg.com Brex (sponsor): https://brex.com/corememory Send Cut Send (sponsor): https://sendcutsend.com/corememory Subscribe to watch more Core Memory videos    / @corememoryvideos   Check out our podcasts    / @corememorypodcast   https://www.corememory.com/podcast Find Ashlee Vance at www.corememory.com   / ashlee.vance   https://x.com/ashleevance Find Kylie Robison at https://x.com/kyliebytes   / kylie.robison   Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:02 Inside Meta Superintelligence Labs 06:23 The Tahoe Conversation That Changed Everything 12:50 How Do You Rebuild a Frontier Lab in 9 Months? 24:35 The Soup, Sam Altman, and Being "Too Young" 32:48 MuseSpark: Appetizer, Not Entrée 48:47 Why Does Everyone Hate AI Right Now? 53:50 Open Source, Safety, and the Manus Question 1:04:59 Robots, Mangos, and Health Superintelligence 1:11:08 Sci-Fi, BCI, and Do AI Models Deserve Moral Weight?