Stock market volatility was largely prompted by a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which claimed that 95pc of companies were getting “zero return” on their AI investments. A Meta spokesman sought to downplay the freeze, saying: “All that’s happening here is some basic organisational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises.” It comes after the company has been offering top researchers at rival companies, including OpenAI and Google, enormous pay deals to join Meta Superintelligence Labs as Mr Zuckerberg seeks to dominate the field. It has also promised unprecedented investments in AI data centres. The company’s billionaire chief executive has become personally involved in developing cutting-edge AI after the disappointing release of its latest systems, personally messaging top researchers at Silicon Valley AI companies. However, the division has been disrupted by repeated strategy overhauls, which led to the delayed release of its latest “Behemoth” AI model. Talent hunt Mr Zuckerberg has said he wants to develop a “personal superintelligence” that acts as a permanent superhuman assistant and lives in smart glasses. “We believe in putting this power in people’s hands to direct it towards what they value in their own lives,” he wrote last month. “This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output.” Mr Zuckerberg recently told investors that he wanted “small, talent-dense teams” to be driving its AI work, rather than large groups of researchers. Despite this, the company has said that the cost of paying staff will significantly increase in the coming years. Analysts at Morgan Stanley warned this week that the pay surge may “dilute shareholder value without any clear innovation gains”. Concerns about AI progress have been amplified by the modest response to GPT-5, the much-anticipated new version of ChatGPT. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has compared hype around AI to the dotcom bubble at the turn of the century.