Business
Meet the People Zuck Hired for His AI Superintelligence Team
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just hired his dream team of AI avengers, raising the stakes in the all-out battle between Big Tech companies for talent.
On Monday, Zuckerberg announced the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a group of star researchers that Meta poached from its AI competitors and has tasked with building a “personal superintelligence for everyone.”
Interest in the new unit surged after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that Meta is offering recruits $100 million signing bonuses. But the team also offers a glimpse into what Meta is up to on AI, which it has mostly kept under wraps so far.
Meta is clearly interested in using multimodal AI, which means using AI to generate images, video, and speech. It has hired multiple people with expertise in this domain.
The new hires also show Meta is keeping very close tabs on OpenAI, since most of them worked on training OpenAI’s latest models. (Meta wouldn’t be the only Big Tech firm obsessed with beating ChatGPT.)
Meta has said it will disclose other hires later, so it’s still early. Regardless, the hiring blitz has commanded Silicon Valley’s attention. Whatever form it takes, Meta’s new team stands to shape whoever controls the future of AI.
Meta didn’t comment for this article.
Leaders
Alexandr Wang will lead the team as its Chief AI Officer, according to Zuckerberg’s memo. At only 28, Wang has already cofounded and led Scale AI, a startup that helps Big Tech train their latest AI models. Meta recently invested $14 billion into Scale as part of a deal to hire Wang. Wang has a strong interest in AI progress: while he was at Scale, for example, the startup helped create an especially difficult test for AI systems called Humanity’s Last Exam.
Nat Friedman will co-lead Meta’s lab with Wang, Zuck’s memo says. Friedman is best-known as the former CEO of Github and as an AI investor who has backed startups like Stripe and Perplexity. Friedman has also served on Meta’s AI advisory group since May 2024. He’s dabbled in other projects, too, like funding a program to decode an ancient Roman scroll charred by the Pompeii eruption.
Researchers and others
Trapid Bansal is a former research scientist at OpenAI, where he co-created the company’s leading o-series of AI models, Meta’s announcement says. OpenAI’s o3 model is touted by OpenAI as its most powerful “reasoning” model. Reasoning is a trend that’s taken over AI this past year, and involves AI chatbots fleshing out their ‘thoughts’ before answering a question.
Jiahui Yu used to lead OpenAI’s perception team, which works on multimodal AI, and co-led Gemini’s multimodal efforts when he worked at Google, according to his personal website. He’s also helped build some of OpenAI’s latest models, Meta says.
Shuchao Bi also worked on multimodal AI at OpenAI, co-creating GPT-4o’s voice mode. He also co-created YouTube shorts when he worked at Google, according to a Columbia University profile page.
Huiwen Chang is an expert in multimodal AI who helped launch image generation for OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, Meta says. Prior to that, she used to work for Google and Adobe, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Ji Lin is a former OpenAI research scientist who specializes in multimodal and reasoning models, his personal website says. He’s also a co-creator of several of OpenAI’s latest AI models, Meta says.
Hongyu Ren also worked at OpenAI, where he led a team focused on post-training AI models. “Post-training” means improving an AI model’s performance after the model itself has already been created.
Shengjia Zhao is a co-creator of ChatGPT and previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, Meta says. Synthetic data means using AI-generated data to make AI models smarter — another big AI trend as AI labs run out of materials to train on.
Johan Schalkwyk worked as a machine learning lead at Sesame, a startup building software and hardware that can chat naturally with people. Schalkwyk previously worked at Google on speech-related technologies, including leading a ‘moonshot’ effort to expand Google’s support to 1,000 languages, according to his LinkedIn page.
Pei Sun worked for Google creating the most recent generations of AI models for Google’s self-driving car subsidiary Waymo. Sun also worked on post-training and reasoning efforts for Gemini, Google’s ChatGPT competitor, according to Meta’s announcement.
Joel Pobar worked on building inference systems for OpenAI rival Anthropic. That means making sure massively popular AI systems have enough data centers and other tools to run smoothly. Prior to joining Anthropic, Pobar worked at Meta (then Facebook) for about a decade, leading engineering teams, his LinkedIn page shows.
Business
Capgemini to buy WNS to boost its business process services with AI – Computerworld
For Gartner vice president analyst DD Mishra, WNS’s investments in intelligent automation, analytics, and agentic solutions including its TRAC analytics suite and Malkom knowledge management platform will complement Capgemini’s existing technology and consulting strengths.
Sharath Srinivasamurthy, research vice president at IDC, pointed to the acquisitions WNS has itself made in recent months, including Kipi.ai, Smart Cube, and OptiBuy to enhance its data, analytics, and procurement stack and extend its proficiency in business process operations, said.
However, Rajesh Ranjan, managing partner at Everest Group, views the WNS acquisition as more of a strategic play rather than being focused on garnering more agentic tools or capabilities.
Business
Locafy Launches AI-Powered SEO Suite Targeting 40M Business Market

Locafy’s AI Search Platform Powers Visibility Across Organic and AI Search
New Product Lineup Tailored to Local, National, and e-Commerce Businesses
AI-Powered Tools Designed to Automate Engagement and Accelerate Online Presence
PERTH, Australia, July 07, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Locafy Limited (NASDAQ: LCFY, “Locafy”), a globally recognized leader in location-based digital marketing, today unveiled its FY26 suite of AI-powered SEO products. These solutions, now commercially available following successful market testing, are designed to deliver measurable improvements across organic, AI, and marketplace search results.
Locafy initially outlined its AI-powered publishing roadmap in December 2024, promising to streamline content production and improve cost-effective online visibility for businesses.
“We are excited to announce that we’ve delivered on that promise,” said Gavin Burnett, CEO of Locafy.
All of Locafy’s publishing and SEO products are designed to drive visibility in search engines and, increasingly, AI-driven search tools and marketplaces. Recent research shows these optimizations extend across both traditional and emerging search platforms.
“We’ve evolved our technology to influence not only search engine rankings but also AI search results,” said Burnett. “Our platform helps position our clients’ websites as authoritative sources for high-value keywords, across local, national, and e-commerce campaigns.”
Burnett added, “We’ve also automated the creation of AI-search-ready landing pages, opening up a greenfield opportunity for scaled monetization. Our U.S. directory includes more than 9.68 million direct business listings, and our citation management partners publish more than 28 million business listings across our directories. Each of these represents either a direct sales opportunity or a chance to collaborate with partners using the data we already publish on their behalf.”
Locafy is focused on three primary solution categories:
- Online Business Listings
- Local SEO
- AI-powered engagement tools
Online Business Listings
Locafy continues to assert that online business listings form the cornerstone of successful Local SEO. These listings supply structured data that fuels automated SEO product generation. Locafy currently publishes more than 9.5 million listings in the U.S. and remains focused on partnerships with citation management firms and multi-location businesses. It is also exploring acquisitions of databases, directories, and citation management assets.
The Total Addressable Market (TAM) for the Local SEO solution in their key target markets of USA, Canada, Australia, and the UK is more than 40 million businesses.
“We currently host more than 63 million business listings worldwide, of which more than 40 million are in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the UK,” said Burnett. “However, our direct sales opportunity is more than 11.4 million, plus we have more than 28 million listings that we publish on behalf of partners, who can now connect to our Platform to automate the production of our Local SEO products for their clients.”
Country | Partner Added* | Claimed* |
Australia | 2,145,707 | 652,351 |
Canada | 1,533,479 | 289,274 |
United Kingdom | 3,458,205 | 802,003 |
United States of America | 33,076,154 | 9,684,329 |
TOTAL | 40,213,545 | 11,427,957 |
Local SEO
The flagship solution, Localizer, integrates listing syndication, AI-search optimization, review management, and Google Map Pack enhancement.
“We haven’t seen another product that combines these capabilities—at a price point starting around
AI-powered Engagement Tools
In addition to improving search visibility, Locafy has developed a scalable, cost-effective AI Voice Concierge that can serve as a virtual receptionist, product expert, or customer service agent.
“This is our first step into AI-enabled customer engagement,” said Burnett. “Our Voice Concierge acts like a digital team member—it can take bookings, provide answers, and interact 24/7. Just feed it your business documents and it learns. We record and transcribe every interaction, giving clients full transparency.
“This kind of capability once felt like science fiction, but it’s here now—and Locafy is helping businesses adapt and thrive in an AI-powered world.”
Over the past six months, Locafy has streamlined its product suite, automated key production processes, and validated product performance through live testing. With this foundation in place, the Company is poised for commercial growth in FY2026.
While the company still offers solutions for National SEO and e-Commerce, it believes the immediate opportunity afforded by its breakthroughs in AI Search represents a larger and more scalable revenue opportunity with far greater automation already in place.
About Locafy
Locafy (Nasdaq: LCFY, LCFYW) is a globally recognized software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology company specializing in local search engine marketing. Founded in 2009, Locafy’s mission is to revolutionize the US
Investor Relations Contact:
Matt Glover
Gateway Group, Inc.
(949) 574-3860
LCFY@gateway-grp.com
Business
Apple appeals against ‘unprecedented’ €500m EU fine over app store | Apple
Apple has launched an appeal against an “unprecedented” €500m (£430m) fine imposed by the EU on the company, in the latest clash between US tech companies and Brussels.
The iPhone maker accused the European Commission – the EU’s executive arm – of going “far beyond what the law requires” in a dispute over its app store.
In April, the commission fined Apple €500m after finding the company had breached the Digital Markets Act by preventing app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the app store.
Last month, Apple overhauled its app store rules to comply with the EU order to scrap its technical and commercial curbs on developers in order to avoid fines of 5% of its average daily worldwide revenue, or about €50m a day.
As a result Apple introduced new fee structures for developers using its app store. On Monday, Apple accused Brussels of making it deploy “confusing” business terms in order to avoid the threat of fines.
“Today we filed our appeal because we believe the European Commission’s decision – and their unprecedented fine – go far beyond what the law requires,” said Apple, announcing an appeal to the general court, the second highest court in the EU. “As our appeal will show, the EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users.”
Apple also accused the commission of unlawfully expanding the definition of “steering” – or the language and methods the company allows developers to use when guiding consumers outside its app stores.
The company said officials on Brussels had changed the definition by, for instance, not just focusing on whether app developers should be allowed to link to an external website, but also on whether developers should be permitted to promote offers inside an app.
Donald Trump’s senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has accused the EU of using “lawfare” against big US tech companies, describing the use of regulations against American companies such as Apple and Meta as part of a barrage of “non-tariff weapons” used for by foreign states against the US.
Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission vice-president responsible for tech sovereignty, said in April that the EU will not rip up its tech rules in an attempt to agree a trade deal with the US. In January, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of the Facebook owner Meta, accused the EU of “institutionalising censorship” via its digital rules.
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Trump has set a 9 July deadline to seal a trade deal with the bloc – with the threat of imposing a 50% tariff on EU imports into the US if agreement is not reached.
Tom Smith, a competition lawyer at Geradin Partners and a former legal director at the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, said Apple “fundamentally hates” attempts to change its app store.
“The blunt truth is that it is worth spending a few million on legal fees in order to disrupt and delay the development of a more open app ecosystem, which is a market that is worth many billions a year to Apple,” he said.
The European Commission has been approached for comment.
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