Meta will lay off 600 employees from its artificial intelligence (AI) unit, according to a CNBC report. These cuts were announced in a memo by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI.
Employees across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) unit and other product-related positions will be impacted. However, they do not impact employees within TBD Labs, which includes many of the top-tier AI hires brought into the company this summer.
The AI unit was considered “bloated” within Meta, with teams like FAIR and more product-oriented groups often vying for computing resources. When the company’s new hires joined the company to create Superintelligence Labs, it inherited the oversized Meta AI unit, they said. The layoffs are an attempt by Meta to continue to trim the department and further cement Wang’s role in steering the company’s AI strategy.
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Following the cuts, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs’ workforce now sits at just under 3,000. The company notified at least some employees on Wednesday that Nov. 21 is their termination date and until then, they’re in a “non-working notice period.”
“During this time, your internal access will be removed and you do not need to do any additional work for Meta,” said the message, which was viewed by CNBC. “You may use this time to search for another role at Meta.” The company also said that it’s paying 16 weeks of severance plus two weeks for every completed year of service, “minus your notice period.”
Meta also cut employees from its risk division because of “improvements in the company’s internal technology.”
Meta’s chief compliance and privacy officer of product Michel Protti informed workers in the risk org on Wednesday that it has been moving away from manual reviews to more automated processes, according to Business Insider. “As a result, we don’t need as many roles in some areas as we once did,” he wrote, “without disclosing the number of affected roles.”
Protti also mentioned that Meta is making the changes as it has invested in “building more global technical controls” over the past few years, and has made “significant progress” in its approach to risk management and compliance.
In the past few months, Meta has been investing massively in AI infrastructure and recruitment. Most recently, the company entered into a $27 billion deal with Blue Owl Capital to fund the Hyperion data center in Louisiana.