Meta makes 'big bet' on top leaders with stock options as pressure builds to catch up in AI

Meta is granting stock options to key leaders in an effort to retain talent as pressure intensifies on the company to bolster its position in artificial intelligence.

The executives in the incentive plan include CFO Susan Li, technology chief Andrew Bosworth, Chief Product Officer Christopher Cox and operating chief Javier Olivan, according to SEC filings released on Tuesday evening.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg , with a net worth of over $200 billion, is not part of the plan.

A high strike price and the relatively short timeline for achieving the goals are an indication of Meta's urgency to show progress in the rapidly growing AI market.

While OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have rolled out popular AI models and features, Meta has struggled to find a consistent strategy even as it plans to shell out up to $135 billion this year in capital expenditures.

Meta's stock price is down about 4% in the past year, trailing all of its megacap tech peers other than Microsoft , which has dropped 5%.

Alphabet, meanwhile, has jumped 73%, boosted by the success of its Gemini AI portfolio.

The next tranche requires a stock price of $1,393.87.

The price goes up significantly for each additional tranche, with the highest being $3,727.12, which would make the company worth over $9 trillion.

The most valuable company in the world today is Nvidia at about $4.3 trillion.

Meta spent 2025 overhauling its AI unit after the release of its Llama 4 family of AI models failed to captivate third-party developers.

As part of its AI revamp, Meta in June invested $14.3 billion into Scale AI and hired the startup's CEO, Alexandr Wang, to become its chief AI officer and lead its AI unit, now known as Meta Superintelligence Labs.

CNBC reported in December that Meta is pursuing a new Llama successor and frontier AI model, codenamed Avocado.