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Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang announced recently that the company is laying off approximately 600 positions from its Meta Superintelligence Labs division. "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 in his memo to staff members, as viewed by Business Insider and CNBC.
The laid off employees have been placed on a non-working notice period through November 21, with their internal access removed and no work requirements during this transition.Affected employees will receive 16 weeks of severance plus two additional weeks for every completed year of service, minus the notice period. The company has assembled a specialised recruiting team to help displaced workers find alternative positions within Meta through an expedited hiring process.
Elite AI hires spared as Meta streamlines bloated operations
The layoffs targeted Meta's legacy AI infrastructure teams, the Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) unit, and product-focused positions, but did not affect employees in TBD Labs—the elite division housing recent high-profile recruits. Within Meta, the AI unit was considered bloated, with teams often competing for computing resources."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 stated in his memo.
Wang emphasised that the restructuring doesn't signal decreased AI investment, stating the company will continue hiring "industry-leading AI-native talent". The cuts come as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions recruiting top researchers from rival companies like OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, with some receiving compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars.Following the cuts, Meta's Superintelligence Labs workforce now sits at just under 3,000 employees.
Read Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang's full memo to employees
Earlier today, we made some changes to MSL to move us toward being the most agile and talent-dense team in the industry. 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.It's never an easy decision to say goodbye to colleagues. These are talented people who have worked extremely hard and contributed to our Al effort. Anyone in North America whose role was impacted has already been notified. Those who may be impacted in EMEA have been notified and remain subject to consultation.We are supporting the majority of those impacted in finding new roles at the company. We have spun up a tiger team of recruiters to help this group find the right match for their expertise and land in roles through an expedited hiring process.This by no means signals any decrease in investment. In fact, we will continue to hire industry-leading Al-native talent. Our goal is to enable MSL to move faster. We remain excited about the models we are training, our ambitious compute plans, and the products we are building, and I'm confident in our path to superintelligence.
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