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Meta Platforms has said it is cutting roughly 600 AI jobs even as it continues to hire more workers for its superintelligence lab. According to Reuters, the layoffs are part of the tech giant’s broader effort to streamline operations and reduce organisational layers. Axios first reported the cuts, which will affect Meta’s Fundamental AI Research, or FAIR unit, as well as product-related AI and AI infrastructure units. According to Reuters, employees working in TBD Labs, the unit responsible for Meta’s advanced large language model (LLM) development and home to several high-profile AI recruits, will remain unaffected. The lab, which operates under the direct supervision of Meta’s chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, has become central to Meta’s AI ambitions. According to Associated Press citing sources, CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to back these recent, high-cost hires while trimming legacy positions. Citing a memo sent to workers by chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, Axios said the company is encouraging employees affected to apply for other jobs at Meta, with most expected to find other roles. The Menlo Park, California-based company is also still recruiting and hiring for TBD Lab, which is developing Meta’s latest large language models. Large language models are the technology behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama. Meta has taken a different approach to AI than many of its rivals, releasing its flagship Llama system for free as an open-source product that enables people to use and modify some of its key components. Meta says more than a billion people use its AI products each month, but it’s also widely seen as lagging behind competitors such as OpenAI and Google in encouraging consumer use of large language models, also known as LLMs. AI Push Continues Despite Cuts Despite the job reductions, Meta remains committed to expanding its AI capabilities to compete with OpenAI and Google. The company has poured billions into building large-scale AI infrastructure and hiring top researchers. Following the layoffs, the Superintelligence Labs team will have just under 3,000 employees. Affected staff were informed that their official termination date is November 21 and that they are currently in a “non-working notice period”. As per the memo, “During this time, your internal access will be removed and you do not need to do any additional work for Meta. You may use this time to search for another role at Meta.” Employees will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two additional weeks for every year of completed service, adjusted for the notice period. Leadership Shift and AI Investments Reports suggest that Zuckerberg’s dissatisfaction with Meta’s AI progress intensified after the April release of the Llama 4 models, which drew a tepid response from developers. In response, he established Meta Superintelligence Labs, headed by Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, to accelerate breakthroughs in generative AI.
