Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, informed staff in a memo on Wednesday that the company will eliminate approximately 600 jobs from its superintelligence lab. Meta declined to comment but confirmed to TechCrunch that the reporting from Axios on this matter is accurate.
This reorganization occurs as Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other firms compete intensely to build the most powerful AI systems. Meta had a very active summer hiring period, during which it recruited more than 50 researchers from its competitors by offering multimillion-dollar pay packages. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that none of his company’s best people accepted Meta’s offers.
In his memo to staff, Wang explained the reasoning behind the job cuts. He wrote that by reducing the team’s size, fewer conversations will be needed to make decisions. He also stated that each remaining person will be more load-bearing and will have greater scope and impact.
This approach aligns with Meta’s recent “year of efficiency,” a term used to describe the company’s previous mass layoffs. At that time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff that being leaner is better.
It now appears that Meta is not significantly reducing its overall headcount but is instead reorganizing its efforts. The company claims that most of the people affected by these cuts should be able to find another position within Meta.