Months after a major spending push to acquire top industry talent for its artificial intelligence ambitions, Meta’s AI Superintelligence Labs is set to lay off around 600 employees, an internal memo said.
Employees in Meta’s AI division were informed of the cuts on October 22, according to the report. Notably, the company’s recently formed TBD Lab group, which includes many of the highly paid new recruits, remains unaffected, Bloomberg reported.
Meta’s AI Chief: Move Aims To Boost Efficiency
Meta Platforms’ Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang said in an internal memo that the downsizing is designed to streamline operations and reduce bureaucracy.
“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang wrote.
According to Bloomberg, Meta has encouraged affected employees to apply for other roles within the company, with plans to continue hiring across its AI teams. The job cuts were first reported by Axios.
Hiring Freeze And Organisational Changes
The Wall Street Journal reported on August 20 that Meta had frozen hiring for its AI division. A company spokesperson told Reuters that the freeze was part of routine “organisational planning” to establish a solid structure for its superintelligence efforts after recent recruitment drives and budgeting reviews.
Meta’s Costly AI Push
The layoffs come amid Meta’s intense competition in the global AI race. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poured billions into artificial intelligence to keep pace with rivals OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
Meta reportedly invested $14.3 billion in data-labelling startup Scale AI, leading to Alexandr Wang’s appointment as head of its AI division.
Speaking to The Information in July, Zuckerberg dismissed reports of Meta offering “million-dollar pay packages” to lure AI experts from competitors as “inaccurate” but acknowledged that “it’s a hot market” and that spending heavily to secure talent “makes sense.”
High Turnover Among New Recruits
The Superintelligence team, which onboarded about 50 employees—including hires from Apple, Anthropic, xAI, Google, and OpenAI—reportedly offered compensation packages of up to $100 million.
By August, at least three members had departed the company, including Rishabh Agarwal, Avi Verma, and Ethan Knight, with the latter two returning to Sam Altman-led OpenAI, according to Wired.
Altman reportedly criticised Meta’s recruitment strategy in an internal memo, calling the poaching “distasteful” and writing, “I’ve lost track of how many people from here they’ve tried to get to be their Chief Scientist.”
