Meta Freezes Hiring In AI Division

Money | Science & Health

8 hours ago

Originally posted by: Zero Hedge

Weeks after reports that Meta was offering $100 million signing bonuses to poach OpenAI talent, it turns out the social media giant’s chatbot ambitions aren’t panning out so well – as the company has frozen hiring in its artificial intelligence division, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The freeze, which began last week, is part of a broader restructuring within the AI group – and prohibits current AI division employees from moving across teams withing the division. Any exceptions to the freeze will have to go through the company’s chief AI officer, Alexander Wang, according to people familiar with the matter.

Meta confirmed the freeze, telling the Journal that this is nothing more than “basic organizational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises.”

The recent restructuring inside Meta divides its AI efforts into four teams: one working on superintelligence, called TBD Lab, that houses many of the new hires; a second working on AI products; a third working on infrastructure; and a fourth dedicated to projects with a longer time horizon and more exploration, the people said. The latter, called Fundamental AI Research, remains largely untouched in the reorganization.

The four groups sit within the umbrella of Meta Superintelligence Labs, a name that reflects Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s recent emphasis on building computer systems that can outperform the smartest humans on cognitive tasks. The Information previously reported some details of Meta’s AI reorganization. -WSJ

Meanwhile the company’s auto-AI within Facebook posts seems to be dead wrong every time, and in fact the opposite of super intelligent.

Seems like those nine-figure signing bonuses might have been a mistake… as several analysts have voiced concerns about aggressive investments in AI from leading tech firms – with some specifically pointing to Meta’s ‘fast-rising stock-based compensation costs’ as something that could impact shareholder returns.

Mounting concern from investors over the costs of the tech giants’ AI buildout has played a role in this week’s selloff of technology stocks. In an Aug. 18 research note, analysts at Morgan Stanley warned that the fast-rising stock-based compensation offered by Meta and Google to lure AI talent could threaten their ability to return capital to shareholders via buybacks. Lavish spending on talent, the analysts wrote, “has the potential to drive AI breakthroughs with massive value creation or could dilute shareholder value without any clear innovation gains.” -WSJ

Andy Stone, Meta’s head of communications, accused the WSJ of not printing their full statement – which apparently renders the report a nothingburger and totally not damage control.

Mundane because all that’s happening is: a temporary pause on some hiring while we do planning and forecasting, which we do regularly, and a structure for our new superintelligence efforts, after we brought a number of new people on board.

— Andy Stone (@andymstone) August 21, 2025

Stone is of course, super credible after punishing vaccine skeptics and censoring the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

all the credibility in the world, this guy pic.twitter.com/SmSx5sb0vE

— Barbarian Capital (@BarbarianCap) August 21, 2025

Meta ramped up internal focus on AI in April, after its large language models, known as Llama, were a giant disappointment vs. their competitors. As a result, the team responsible has been let go (or ‘reorganized’) as part of the latest move. Following this massive fail, CEO Mark Zuckerberg became personally involved in recruiting AI researchers – approaching several employees from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other laps. He allegedly offered Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Andrew Tulloch as much as $1.5 billion, which Tulloch declined.

Wang, mentioned above, was offered a $14 billion stake, while former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Daniel Gross were also brought on.

You mean more than a year later nothing has changed? https://t.co/wmKBlirinA pic.twitter.com/QJc9Kul0AY

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 20, 2025

As of last week, Meta has successfully hired more than 20 researchers and engineers from OpenAI, at least 13 from Google, three from Apple, and three from Elon Musk’s xAI. In total, they’ve hired more than 50 new employees.

In short…