Just a few months into Meta’s multi-billion-dollar AI moonshot, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is already shaking up his “Superintelligence Lab” — and some of its longtime leaders are leaving amid the chaos.

As the New York Times reports based on insider sources, Meta has announced internally that it will be splitting its AI division into four separate groups: one focused on research, one on so-called “superintelligence,” one on products, and another on infrastructure.

First leaked in part to The Information, this shakeup follows a string of high-profile and even more highly-paid hires for Zuckerberg’s Superintelligence Lab, at least one of whom was offered a whopping $1 billion signing bonus. Poaching talent from OpenAI, Apple, and Google DeepMind, the Meta CEO has spent much of the summer throwing massive gobs of money at the best and brightest from companies he views as competitors.

A huge investment in a buzzy new tech followed by an epic crash out would be extremely on brand for Zuckerberg, who went so hard on the idea of a virtual reality “metaverse” a few years ago that he renamed the entire company from Facebook to Meta in 2021. Those VR efforts have largely stalled since those salad days, with the company subsequently laying off many of the people originally tasked with building it.

Now, of course, the hot new tech trend is AI, and Zuckerberg is all in — complete with the inevitable drama presaged by the company’s VR push.

According to the NYT‘s insiders, who were granted anonymity so they could speak freely, this restructuring of the company’s AI efforts might even constitute an outright downsizing of the company’s AI division, though the newspaper’s sources say the decision isn’t yet final.

Moreover, while those sparkly new hires are being placed in leadership roles at the restructured AI division, the chaos surrounding Zuckerberg’s superintelligence scheme has, according to those insiders, already driven out some of the old guard.

Along with former AI research head research head Joelle Pineau, who left Meta to join the AI starup Cohere back in April, those whose exits hadn’t yet been reported include Angela Fan, a research scientist who helped build Meta’s Llama open-source AI model and is now jumping ship for OpenAI, and Loredana Crisan, a VP of generative AI who’s joining the software company Figma.

When the NYT reached out to Meta to ask about the shake-up, a spokesperson declined to comment — and honestly, we can’t imagine what there would be to say, except that those three may have gotten out at the right time.

More on Zuckerberg’s AI dreams: Zuckerberg Says Meta Is Now Seeing Signs of Advanced AI Improving Itself

The post Zuckerberg's Huge AI Push Is Already Crumbling Into Chaos appeared first on Futurism.

Origianl Creator:Noor Al-Sibai
Original Link: https://futurism.com/zuckerberg-meta-ai-push-chaos
Originally Posted: Wed, 20 Aug 2025 14:11:13 +0000