Hundreds of top AI researchers recently found themselves in an unusual position.

They were getting personalized messages from one of the tech industry's most famous people, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

His pitch, come to Meta.

He's sort of become Meta's recruiter-in-chief.

That's our colleague Megan Babrowski. She covers the tech industry.

In some cases, people didn't even believe it was actually Mark Zuckerberg because why would you, right?

I mean, can you imagine the CEO of this company reaching

out to you? We know one instance where a researcher didn't respond for several days because they

thought it was a hoax. I mean, fair. Yeah, right? Zuckerberg is on a mission to win over AI's

brightest minds to supercharge Meta's AI efforts. Do we know what's in the message?

Is it just like, hey, I'm Mark Zuckerberg.

Can we get coffee?

I don't know exactly what the messages say, but generally once people do respond and

are conversing with him, he invites them to his homes, either in Palo Alto or South Lake Tah Tahoe for a meeting, and then they can go meet him and, you know, sort of talk about this.

We do know that he is offering some people up to $100 million to come join his company.

Holy cow.

Zuckerberg's offering these sky-high salaries because for him and for Meta, the stakes are really high. Whether Meta keeps its position at the top of the tech world could hinge on how Zuckerberg's recruiting targets respond.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Thursday, July 3rd.

Coming up on the show, Meta's fallen behind in the AI race.

Can it catch up?

Tech companies, from Google to Microsoft to Meta, are betting big on AI. Wagering that AI supremacy will be the key to their future success. An AI is already peppered across many

of Meta's products. You can ask questions to an AI assistant in

...