Meta is trimming its artificial intelligence division once again, cutting around 600 jobs from its superintelligence lab as part of an ongoing internal restructuring.
According to a memo obtained by Axios and confirmed by Meta, the layoffs were communicated to staff by the company’s Chief AI Officer, Alexandr Wang. The move, he said, aims to streamline decision-making and increase efficiency within the AI 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 the memo.
The cuts come as major AI players — including Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google — compete to build next-generation AI systems. In recent months, Meta has aggressively expanded its AI talent pool, luring over 50 researchers from rival companies with multimillion-dollar compensation offers. However, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, downplayed the impact, claiming that “none of [OpenAI’s] best people” accepted the offers.
This latest restructuring follows Meta’s so-called “year of efficiency,” a term CEO Mark Zuckerberg used to describe the company’s sweeping cost-cutting and organizational changes that began in 2023. During that period, Meta eliminated thousands of roles across its workforce in a bid to streamline operations and boost profitability.
While this new round of cuts affects Meta’s superintelligence lab, the company maintains that most affected employees are expected to find new roles within other AI or infrastructure teams across the organization.
As Meta doubles down on large-scale AI model development — including its open-weight Llama models — the company appears to be shifting focus from size to specialization, optimizing its teams for faster iteration and more strategic impact.
