Meta announced Wednesday that it will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit, known as Superintelligence Labs, according to an internal memo obtained by this publication.
The move is intended to streamline operations amid an aggressive push to advance AI capabilities and compete with industry rivals.
The Superintelligence Labs, which encompass Meta’s broader AI initiatives, employ several thousand staff members. The exact headcount remains undisclosed, but the reductions represent a targeted effort to address inefficiencies stemming from rapid expansion over the past three years.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has prioritized bolstering Meta’s AI talent pool, including the recent appointment of Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer. Notably, the layoffs will spare the company’s most recent high-profile hires—some of whom command compensation packages reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars. These individuals are tasked with pursuing “superintelligence,” defined as AI systems surpassing human cognitive abilities.
Two sources familiar with the decision described the cuts as a corrective measure to eliminate organizational redundancies created during an earlier hiring surge. The goal, they said, is to accelerate product development cycles.
“In trimming our team size, we’ll need fewer discussions to reach decisions, allowing every remaining member to carry greater responsibility, broader scope, and heightened impact,” Wang stated in the employee memo.
The announcement, first reported by Axios, arrives during a period of heightened competition in the AI sector. Since the 2022 debut of ChatGPT, companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft have intensified recruitment efforts to dominate the development of advanced chatbots and related technologies.
Meta has invested heavily in AI infrastructure in recent years, positioning the technology as central to its future growth. The layoffs signal a shift toward greater efficiency without diminishing the company’s commitment to top-tier talent or ambitious long-term objectives in artificial general intelligence.
