Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is eliminating 600 jobs in its AI division, according to US media. The company confirmed on Wednesday that it will remove roughly 600 artificial intelligence roles while continuing to recruit for its superintelligence lab.
FAIR and AI Infrastructure Teams Face Major Layoffs
Axios first revealed the cuts, which impact Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) unit, along with its product-focused AI and AI infrastructure teams. The newer TBD Lab remains unaffected. Axios cited a memo from chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, who urged affected employees to apply for other positions within Meta. Most of them are expected to secure new internal roles.
Wang explained in the memo that a smaller team allows faster decisions and gives each employee greater responsibility and influence. The California-based company continues to recruit talent for TBD Lab, which develops Meta’s newest large language models (LLMs). These models power systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Meta’s own Llama.
Meta Pursues an Open Approach to AI Development
Meta continues to distinguish itself from competitors through its open strategy. The company offers its Llama system as a semi-open source product, allowing users to modify and apply its main components. Meta claims that over one billion people use its AI tools every month. However, analysts often view the company as trailing OpenAI and Google in driving consumer adoption of large language models.
