Meta Platforms has acquired Moltbook, a fast-rising social network built for AI agents, and will fold its co-founders Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr into Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. The hire-and-buy underscores Big Tech’s escalating race to secure talent and technology behind autonomous AI systems that can execute tasks with minimal human oversight. Moltbook—launched in late January as a Reddit-style forum where bots swap code and banter—has sparked debate over how close AI is to human-like reasoning, even as skeptics including OpenAI’s Sam Altman cast the service itself as a potential fad while praising its underlying tech. Anthropic’s product chief Mike Krieger cautioned that most users aren’t yet ready to cede full computer control to AI. Moltbook’s rapid ascent has also exposed growing pains: cybersecurity firm Wiz flagged a flaw that exposed private messages, thousands of emails and over a million credentials, an issue the company says has been fixed.
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