Facebook parent Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it had acquired Moltbook, a social networking platform built for artificial intelligence agents, bringing the company’s ​founders into its AI research division.

The development signals an intense race ‌among tech giants to snap up AI talent and technology, as autonomous agents capable of executing real-world tasks move from novelty to the next frontier of the industry.

The deal ​will bring Moltbook co-founders Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr into Meta ​Superintelligence Labs, the unit led by former Scale AI CEO ⁠Alexandr Wang.

Schlicht and Parr are expected to begin at Meta Superintelligence Labs ​on March 16, according to Axios, which first reported the development.

Meta did not disclose ​financial terms of the deal.

Moltbook, a Reddit-like site where AI-powered bots appear to swap code and gossip about their human owners, was started as a niche experiment in late January.

It ​has since become the center of a growing debate on how close ​computers are to possessing human-like intelligence.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman played down the site as a likely ‌fad ⁠but said the underlying technology offered a glimpse of the future.

“Moltbook maybe (is a passing fad) but OpenClaw is not,” Altman said.

OpenAI last month hired Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw, an open-source bot formerly known as Clawdbot or Moltbot ​that is backing ​the project’s open-sourcing.

Mike ⁠Krieger, Anthropic’s chief product officer, said most people are not yet ready to give AI full autonomy over their ​computers.

Schlicht has championed “vibe coding,” building programs with the help of ​AI, ⁠saying he “didn’t write one line of code” for the site.

Schlicht built Moltbook largely using his own personal AI assistant, Clawd Clawderberg.

Moltbook’s rise also brought risks. Cybersecurity firm ⁠Wiz ​said the approach left a major flaw that exposed private messages, ​more than 6,000 email addresses and more than a million credentials.

Wiz said the problem was fixed ​after it contacted Moltbook.