Meta to fire 600 employees from its AI division
What's the story
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is planning to lay off around 600 employees from its Superintelligence Labs artificial intelligence (AI) unit, as per Axios. The move will impact several teams including the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) division, product-related AI, and AI infrastructure units. However, the newly formed TBD Lab will not be affected by these cuts.
Memo insights
Layoffs part of larger reorganization
The information about the impending layoffs comes from an internal memo, Axios reported. The memo also revealed that these cuts are part of a larger reorganization strategy within Meta's AI efforts. This restructuring began in June after senior staff departures and a lukewarm response to its open-source Llama 4 model.
Future vision
Zuckerberg committed to investing in AI despite layoffs
Despite the layoffs, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously announced plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into building massive AI data centers for Superintelligence Labs. This is part of a long-term strategy that began in 2013 with the establishment of FAIR and the hiring of Yann LeCun as its chief AI scientist. The goal was to create a global research network dedicated to deep learning technology.