Meta lays off 600 from ‘bloated’ AI unit as Wang cements leadership

Meta The company will lay off about 600 employees in its artificial intelligence unit as it plans to cut layers and work more agile, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

The company announced the cuts in a note from chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Employees in Meta’s AI infrastructure units, the Fundamental AI Research unit (FAIR), and other product-related positions will be affected.

But the cuts did not affect employees at TBD Labs, which includes many of the senior AI employees brought to the social media company this summer, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Employees overseen by Wang escaped layoffs, sources said, underscoring Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s alleged bet on expensive hires against former employees.

The AI ​​unit at Meta is thought to be bloated, with teams like FAIR and more product-focused groups often competing for computing resources, sources said. When the company’s new hires joined the company to create Super Intelligence Labs, they said, it took over the company’s large Meta AI unit. The layoffs are Meta’s attempt to continue shrinking the department and further strengthen Wang’s role in driving the company’s AI strategy.

Meta has been aggressively overhauling its approach to artificial intelligence in recent months as it tries to keep up with rivals like OpenAI. Googleis pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and hiring.

Following the cuts, Meta’s Super Intelligence Labs workforce now stands at just under 3,000, sources said.

Meta notified at least some employees on Wednesday that Nov. 21 was their termination date and that they were “on notice period” until then.

“During this period, your internal access will be removed and you will not need to do any additional work for Meta,” the message seen by CNBC said. “You can use this time to look for another role at Meta.”

The company also said it would pay 16 weeks of severance pay plus two weeks for each completed year of service, “excluding your notice period.”

CEO Mark Zuckerberg He was disappointed with Meta’s progress in AI, especially after receiving a lukewarm response from developers following the release of Llama 4 models in April.

Following Meta’s major investment in Scale AI, Zuckerberg introduced a new unit called Meta Superintelligence Labs, comprised of top AI researchers and engineers. The group is led by Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

In the company’s second-quarter earnings call in July, Meta said it expected total expenses for 2025 to be in the range of $114 billion to $118 billion, raising the lower end of the previous outlook. That number is only expected to increase, with Meta saying AI initiatives “will result in 2026 expense growth exceeding 2025 expense growth.”

Meta is scheduled to report third-quarter results next week.

On Tuesday, Meta announced a $27 billion deal with Blue Owl Capital to finance and develop the massive Hyperion data center in rural Louisiana. The data center is expected to be large enough to take up “a significant portion of Manhattan’s footprint.” Zuckerberg said In a post from July.

axios He was the first to report the layoffs.

— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report

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