Wall Street Lunch: Zuckerberg Assembles Team To Advance Artificial General Intelligence

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The Meta CEO is personally hiring people to advance artificial general intelligence. (0:15) Morgan Stanley bullish on Coca-Cola. (1:13) Novo Nordisk up on activist stake report. (2:30)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast:

Our top story so far, Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg is personally assembling a team of experts to advance artificial general intelligence.

Bloomberg says Zuckerberg has prioritized recruiting for the new team, referred internally as a “superintelligence group.” He intends to recruit from a group of AI researchers and engineers whom he has met in recent weeks at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto.

Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, refers to a machine that has the ability to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human can.

Zuckerberg is building the team simultaneously with a potential $10 billion investment in Scale AI, which offers data services to help companies train their models. Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang is anticipated to join the group after a deal is done.

The CEO plans to recruit nearly 50 people for the new team, including a new head of AI research, almost all of whom he is recruiting personally. Zuckerberg’s plans to recruit personally are driven in part by frustration over the performance and reception of Meta’s latest large language model Llama 4.

Among active stocks, Morgan Stanley called Coca-Cola (KO) a top pick in the beverages sector as it reiterated an Overweight rating.

Analyst Dara Mohsenian and his team see sustained organic sales growth for Coca-Cola at a pace far above peers, aided by strong pricing power and solid historical volume growth. The company is also seen sustaining its market share gains in a benign competitive environment. In terms of new brands, the Fairlife acquisition is seen providing a major boost.

IBM (IBM) has announced plans to build the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029 at its new Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie. Fault-tolerant architecture can operate when parts of the system fail.

The upcoming system, dubbed IBM Quantum Starling, is expected to perform up to 20,000 times more operations than today’s quantum computers. It will allow users to explore complex quantum states far beyond the limited capabilities of current systems.

And Casey’s General Stores (CASY) is rallying post-earnings as it reported strong sales of its hot sandwiches, bakery items, and beverages.

Total sales were up nearly 11% to $3.99 billion, $60 million above estimates. Adjusted EBITDA rose 20% to $263 million. Inside same store sales improved by 1.7% year-over-year, with a 12.5% increase in inside gross profit.

In other news of note, Novo Nordisk (NVO) shares hit their highest level in more than two months following a Financial Times report that activist hedge fund Parvus Asset Management is building a stake in the Danish drugmaker.

The drugmaker told Seeking Alpha in an email that it does not have anything to “share on this topic.”

The report comes as the company faces growing challenges in maintaining its dominance in the obesity drug market.

Parvus, known for past campaigns involving Ryanair and UniCredit, is seeking to influence the selection of Novo Nordisk’s new CEO, the report said. Parvus did not disclose the size of its stake in Novo Nordisk.

And in the Wall Street Research Corner, Citi strategist Scott Chronert joined the party and boosted his year-end 2025 S&P 500 (SP500) target to 6,300, citing “a marginally more constructive fundamental view and an expectation for persistency of the current valuation backdrop.”

He also established a mid-2026 target of 6,500, implying high single-digit percentage upside over the next 12 months while emphasizing “structural bullishness on U.S. large cap” equities.

“Our growth preference continues for now as the AI theme regains momentum,” Chronert said.

He also raised his full-year index earnings estimate to $261 from $255 previously, though this remains below the current consensus of $264.

“No doubt, the S&P 500 is trading toward the higher end of its historic valuation range. We presume the index can hold 21x forward,” Chronert said, noting that this valuation level puts pressure on 2026 earnings growth.