Meta is once again undergoing a major reorganization within its artificial intelligence department. Approximately 600 jobs will be lost in the company’s AI division.
The cuts will affect the FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) research group, the product-focused AI teams, and the infrastructure department, among others. At the same time, Meta will continue hiring staff for its new research department, the TBD Lab, which focuses on developing super-intelligent AI systems.
A Meta spokesperson, Ana Brekalo, confirmed to The Verge that Axios’s reporting is accurate. The restructuring is part of a broader strategic shift at Meta, which found its existing AI operations to be too slow and bureaucratic. According to an internal memo from AI head Alexandr Wang, the reorganization should lead to faster decision-making and greater agility. By forming smaller teams, he believes employees will have more freedom and impact within the organization.
The new course follows a period of intensive investment. Last summer, Meta invested $14.3 billion in the AI company Scale AI and brought Alexandr Wang on board as Chief AI Officer. Shortly thereafter, the recruitment campaign was temporarily halted, after which Meta announced that it would focus more strongly on AI products and infrastructure.
Techzine previously reported that Meta had frozen recruitment after hiring dozens of researchers and engineers from OpenAI, Google, Apple, xAI, and Anthropic, among others, in a short period. According to that earlier report, this was not a cost-cutting measure, but a strategic reorganization of the AI department into four parts: TBD Lab, product-related AI, infrastructure, and long-term research.
Investor concerns
Techzine also reported at the time that investors were concerned about the high salaries Meta was offering new talent. In one case, an offer of $1.5 billion was reportedly made to a researcher, who ultimately rejected it. In addition, Meta increased its annual capital expenditures to approximately $72 billion, partly to finance growing AI investments.
Although the cutbacks affect various departments, the TBD Lab remains unaffected. This lab was founded to develop experimental AI projects that go beyond Meta’s existing product lines. In an earlier statement, Wang said that Meta plans to integrate and scale up many of FAIR’s research projects within TBD Lab’s larger model runs. The reorganization now appears to be accelerating that process.
In his memo, Wang expressed confidence in the company’s new direction. He emphasized that Meta is on the right path to developing more powerful AI models that could eventually lead to true superintelligence. According to him, employees who lose their jobs are encouraged to apply internally, as their knowledge and experience remain essential to Meta’s continued growth in AI.