Mark Zuckerberg appears to be making quite some moves in the artificial intelligence space, with Meta’s latest acquisition signaling the company’s serious commitment to achieving AI superintelligence. The tech giant has purchased a minority stake in Luxottica SA, the world’s largest eyewear manufacturer and the company behind Ray-Ban sunglasses, increasing their position from 3% to potentially 5%.
This strategic investment comes as part of Meta’s broader push into AI development. The company recently acquired a 49% non-voting stake in Scale AI for approximately $15 billion. Along with this acquisition, key personnel including Alexander Wang and other engineers are joining Meta’s newly formed superintelligence division.
Meta’s hiring spree has been nothing short of remarkable. The company has successfully acquired talent from across the AI industry, including researchers from Apple, Google DeepMind, Waymo, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Notable acquisitions include Ruoming Pang, head of foundation models at Apple, Jack Ray from Google DeepMind, and multiple specialists from OpenAI’s reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) team.
However, not every acquisition attempt has been successful. Meta’s bid to purchase Ilya Sutskever‘s Safe Super Intelligence was rejected, despite what sources suggest was a substantial offer. Similarly, their $800 million cash offer for Furiosa AI was turned down. Sutskever’s responded by announcing his formal transition to CEO of Safe Super Intelligence, stating they “have the compute, they have the team, and they know what to do.”
The Ray-Ban investment reveals Meta’s vision for the future of AI interfaces. The company appears to believe that smart glasses will become the primary form factor for AI assistants and tools. It seems like they want to market themselves to compete directly with Google’s similar initiatives in augmented reality eyewear.
Meta Connect, scheduled for September 17-18, is expected to showcase the first on-device demonstrations of these AI assistants powered by Meta’s Llama technology. The event will likely reveal how the company plans to integrate their superintelligence ambitions with consumer-facing products like AI-enhanced Ray-Ban glasses.