Meta's AI Talent Exodus: Turmoil at Superintelligence Lab Amid Aggressive Hiring and Restructuring

Zuckerberg's AI hires disrupt Meta with swift exits and threats to leave

Within days of joining Meta, Shengjia Zhao, co-creator of OpenAI's ChatGPT, had threatened to quit and return to his former employer, in a blow to Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar push to build "personal superintelligence." Zhao went as far as to sign employment paperwork to go back to OpenAI. Shortly afterwards, according to four people familiar with the matter, he was given the title of Meta's new "chief AI scientist." The incident underscores Zuckerberg's turbulent effort to direct the most dramatic reorganisation of Meta's senior leadership in the group's 20-year history. One of the few remaining Big Tech founder-CEOs, Zuckerberg has relied on longtime acolytes such as Chief Product Officer Chris Cox to head up his favored departments and build out his upper ranks. But in the battle to dominate AI, the billionaire is shifting towards a new and recently hired generation of executives, including Zhao, former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and former GitHub chief Nat Friedman. Current staff are adapting to the reinvention of Meta's AI efforts as the newcomers seek to flex their power while adjusting to the idiosyncrasies of working within a sprawling $1.95 trillion giant with a hands-on chief executive. "There's a lot of big men on campus," said one investor who is close with some of Meta's new AI leaders. Adding to the tumult, a handful of new AI staff have already decided to leave after brief tenures, according to people familiar with the matter. This includes Ethan Knight, a machine-learning scientist who joined the company weeks ago. Another, Avi Verma, a former OpenAI researcher, went through Meta's onboarding process but never showed up for his first day, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a tweet on X on Wednesday, Rishabh Agarwal, a research scientist who started at Meta in April, announced his departure. He said that while Zuckerberg and Wang's pitch was "incredibly compelling," he "felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk," without giving more detail. Meanwhile, Chaya Nayak and Loredana Crisan, generative AI staffers who had worked at Meta for nine and 10 years respectively, are among the more than half a dozen veteran employees to announce they are leaving in recent days. Wired first reported some details of recent exits, including Zhao's threatened departure. Meta said: "We appreciate that there's outsized interest in seemingly every minute detail of our AI efforts, no matter how inconsequential or mundane, but we're just focused on doing the work to deliver personal superintelligence." A spokesperson said Zhao had been scientific lead of the Meta superintelligence effort from the outset, and the company had waited until the team was in place before formalising his chief scientist title. "Some attrition is normal for any organisation of this size. Most of these employees had been with the company for years, and we wish them the best," they added. Over the summer, Zuckerberg went on a hiring spree to coax AI researchers from rivals such as OpenAI and Apple with the promise of nine-figure sign-on bonuses and access to vast computing resources in a bid to catch up with rival labs. This month, Meta announced it was restructuring its AI group -- recently renamed Meta Superintelligence Lab (MSL) -- into four distinct teams. It is the fourth overhaul of its AI efforts in six months. "One more reorg and everything will be fixed," joked Meta research scientist Mimansa Jaiswal on X last week. "Just one more." Overseeing all of Meta's AI efforts is Wang, a well-connected and commercially minded Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who was poached by Zuckerberg as part of a $14 billion investment in his Scale data labeling group. The 28-year-old is heading Zuckerberg's most secretive new department known as "TBD" -- shorthand for "to be determined" -- which is filled with marquee hires. In one of the new team's first moves, Meta is no longer actively working on releasing its flagship Llama Behemoth model to the public, after it failed to perform as hoped, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, TBD is focused on building newer cutting-edge models. Multiple company insiders describe Zuckerberg as deeply invested and involved in the TBD team, while others criticize him for "micromanaging." Wang and Zuckerberg have struggled to align on a timeline to achieve the chief executive's goal of reaching superintelligence, or AI that surpasses human capabilities, according to another person familiar with the matter. The person said Zuckerberg has urged the team to move faster. Meta said this allegation was "manufactured tension without basis in fact that's clearly being pushed by dramatic, navel-gazing busybodies." Wang's leadership style has chafed with some, according to people familiar with the matter, who noted he does not have previous experience managing teams across a Big Tech corporation. One former insider said some new AI recruits have felt frustrated by the company's bureaucracy and internal competition for resources that they were promised, such as access to computing power. "While TBD Labs is still relatively new, we believe it has the greatest compute-per-researcher in the industry, and that will only increase," Meta said. Wang and other former Scale staffers have struggled with some of the idiosyncratic ways of working at Meta, according to someone familiar with his thinking, for example having to adjust to not having revenue goals as they once did as a startup. Despite teething problems, some have celebrated the leadership shift, including the appointment of popular entrepreneur and venture capitalist Friedman as head of Products and Applied Research, the team tasked with integrating the models into Meta's own apps. The hiring of Zhao, a top technical expert, has also been regarded as a coup by some at Meta and in the industry, who feel he has the decisiveness to propel the company's AI development. The shake-up has partially sidelined other Meta leaders. Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, has remained in the role but is now reporting into Wang. Ahmad Al-Dahle, who led Meta's Llama and generative AI efforts earlier in the year, has not been named as head of any teams. Cox remains chief product officer, but Wang reports directly into Zuckerberg -- cutting Cox out of overseeing generative AI, an area that was previously under his purview. Meta said that Cox "remains heavily involved" in its broader AI efforts, including overseeing its recommendation systems. Going forward, Meta is weighing potential cuts to the AI team, one person said. In a memo shared with managers last week, seen by the Financial Times, Meta said that it was "temporarily pausing hiring across all [Meta Superintelligence Labs] teams, with the exception of business critical roles." Wang's staff would evaluate requested hires on a case-by-case basis, but the freeze "will allow leadership to thoughtfully plan our 2026 headcount growth as we work through our strategy," the memo said.

Cracks are forming in Meta's partnership with Scale AI | TechCrunch

It's only been since June that Meta invested $14.3 billion in the data vendor Scale AI, bringing on CEO Alexandr Wang and several of the startup's top executives to run Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). However, the relationship between the two companies is already showing signs of fraying. At least one of the executives Wang brought over to help run MSL -- Scale AI's former Senior Vice President of GenAI Product and Operations, Ruben Mayer -- has departed Meta after just two months with the company, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Mayer spent roughly five years with Scale AI across two stints. In his short time at Meta, Mayer oversaw AI data operations teams and reported to Wang, but wasn't tapped to join the company's TBD labs -- the core unit tasked with building AI superintelligence, where top AI researchers from OpenAI have landed. Mayer did not respond to two separate requests for comment from TechCrunch. Further, TBD Labs is working with third-party data vendors other than Scale AI to train its upcoming AI models, according to five people familiar with the matter. Those third-party vendors include Mercor and Surge, two of Scale AI's largest competitors, the people said. While AI labs commonly work with several data vendors - Meta has been working with Mercor and Surge since before TBD Labs was spun up - it's rare for an AI lab to invest so heavily in one data vendor. That makes this situation especially notable: even with Meta's multi-billion-dollar investment, several sources said that researchers in TBD Labs see Scale AI's data as low quality and have expressed a preference to work with Surge and Mercor. Scale AI initially built its business on a crowdsourcing model that used a large, low-cost workforce to handle simple data annotation tasks. But as AI models have grown more sophisticated, they now require highly-skilled domain experts -- such as doctors, lawyers, and scientists -- to generate and refine the high-quality data needed to improve their performance. Although Scale AI has moved to attract these subject matter experts with its Outlier platform, competitors like Surge AI and Mercor have been growing quickly because their business models were built on a foundation of high-paid talent from the outset. A Meta spokesperson disputed the fact that there are quality issues with Scale AI's product. Surge and Mercor declined to comment. Asked about Meta's deepening reliance on competing data providers, a Scale AI spokesperson directed TechCrunch to its initial announcement of Meta's investment in the startup, which cites an expansion of the companies' commercial relationship. Meta's deals with third-party data vendors likely mean the company is not putting all its eggs in Scale AI, even after investing billions in the startup. The same can't be said for Scale AI, however. Shortly after Meta announced its massive investment with Scale AI, OpenAI and Google said they would stop working with the data provider. Shortly after losing those customers, Scale AI laid off 200 employees in its data labeling business in July, with the company's new CEO, Jason Droege, blaming the changes in part on "shifts in market demand." Droege said Scale AI would staff up in other parts of the business, including government sales -- the company just landed a $99 million contract with the U.S. Army. Some speculated initially that Meta's investment in Scale AI was really to lure Wang, a founder who has operated in the AI space since Scale AI was founded in 2016 and who appears to be helping Meta to attract top AI talent. Aside from Wang, there's an open question around how valuable Scale is to Meta. One current MSL employee says that several of the Scale executives brought over to Meta are not working on the core TBD Labs team, as with Mayer. Further, Meta isn't exclusively relying on Scale AI for data labeling work. Meanwhile, Meta's AI unit has become increasingly chaotic since bringing on Wang and a wave of top researchers, according to two former employees and one current MSL employee. New talent from OpenAI and Scale AI have expressed frustration with navigating the bureaucracy of a big company, while Meta's previous GenAI team has seen its scope limited, they said. The tensions indicate that Meta's largest AI investment to date may be off to a rocky start, despite that it was supposed to address the company's AI development challenges. After the lackluster launch of Llama 4 in April, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg grew frustrated with the company's AI team, one current and one former employee told TechCrunch. In an effort to turn things around and catch up with OpenAI and Google, Zuckerberg rushed to strike deals and launched an aggressive campaign to recruit top AI talent. Beyond Wang, Zuckerberg has managed to pull in top AI researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic. Meta has also acquired AI voice startups including Play AI and WaveForms AI, and announced a partnership with the AI image generation startup, Midjourney. To power its AI ambitions, Meta recently announced several massive data center buildouts across the U.S. One of the largest is a $50 billion data center in Louisiana called Hyperion, named after a titan in Greek mythology that fathered the God of Sun. Wang, who's not an AI researcher by background, was viewed as a somewhat unconventional choice to lead an AI lab. Zuckerberg reportedly held talks to bring in more traditional candidates to lead the effort, such as OpenAI's chief research officer, Mark Chen, and tried to acquire the startups of Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati. All of them declined. Some of the new AI researchers recently brought in from OpenAI have already left Meta, Wired previously reported. Meanwhile, many longtime members of Meta's GenAI unit have departed in light of the changes. MSL AI researcher Rishabh Agarwal is among the latest, posting on X this week that he'd be leaving the company. "The pitch from Mark and @alexandr_wang to build in the Superintelligence team was incredibly compelling," said Agarwal. "But I ultimately choose to follow Mark's own advice: 'In a world that's changing so fast, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk'." Asked afterward about his time at Meta and what drove his decision to leave, Agarwal declined to comment. Director of product management for generative AI, Chaya Nayak, and research engineer, Rohan Varma, have also announced their departure from Meta in recent weeks. The question now is whether Meta can stabilize its AI operations and retain the talent it needs for its future success. MSL has already started working on its next generation AI model. According to reports from Business Insider, it's aiming to launch it by the end of this year.

Researchers Are Already Leaving Meta's New Superintelligence Lab

CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on a recruiting blitz to lure top AI researchers to Meta. WIRED has confirmed that three recent hires have now resigned. At least three artificial intelligence researchers have resigned from Meta's new superintelligence lab, just two months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg first announced the initiative. Two of the staffers have returned to OpenAI, where they both previously worked, after less than one-month stints at Meta, WIRED has confirmed. Avi Verma was previously a researcher at OpenAI. Ethan Knight worked at the ChatGPT maker earlier in his career but joined Meta from Elon Musk's xAI. A third researcher, Rishabh Agarwal, announced publicly on Monday he was leaving Meta's lab as well. He joined the tech giant in April to work on generative AI projects before switching to a role at Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), according to his LinkedIn profile. While the reasons for Agarwal's departure are not known, he is based in Canada and Meta's AI teams are predominantly based in Menlo Park, California. "It was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence TBD lab, especially given the talent and compute density," Agarwal wrote on X, referring to the team at MSL that is specifically pursuing frontier AI research. "But after 7.5 years across Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, I felt the pull to take on a different kind of risk." It's unclear where he may be going next. Agarwal did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED. "During an intense recruiting process, some people will decide to stay in their current job rather than starting a new one," said Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold. "That's normal," Meta is also losing another leader who has worked at the tech giant for nearly a decade. Chaya Nayak, the director of generative AI product management at Meta, is joining OpenAI to work on special initiatives, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the hire. Verma and Knight did not respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Nayak declined to comment in time for publication. The departures are the strongest public signal yet that Meta Superintelligence Labs could be off to a rocky start. Zuckerberg lured people to join the lab with nine-figure pay packages associated more often with professional sports stars than tech workers, hoping the influx of talent would allow the social networking giant to rapidly catch up with its competitors in the race toward so-called artificial general intelligence. But Meta executives have reportedly struggled to combat bureaucratic and recruitment issues related to its AI initiatives. Meta has repeatedly reorganized its AI teams in recent months, most recently splitting employees into four groups, per The Wall Street Journal. In July, Zuckerberg announced that another former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao, who played a key role in the creation of ChatGPT, would become the chief scientist of MSL. The announcement came after Zhao tried to return to OpenAI -- even going as far as to sign employment paperwork -- according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the events. "Shengjia co-founded MSL and has been our scientific lead since day one," Arnold said in a statement to WIRED. "We formalized his role once our recruiting had ramped and the team had taken shape."

Meta Losing AI Talent Just Months After Its Superintelligence Labs Push

Three staffers have reportedly left within five months after joining Meta Meta is reportedly witnessing the departure of multiple employees just two months after creating its new artificial intelligence (AI) division, Superintelligence Labs. As per the report, both veteran employees and recent joiners working within the AI division have left the Menlo Park-based tech giant to either return to their previous employers or pursue different ventures. Interestingly, the exodus comes just weeks after the company is said to have announced a hiring freeze after spending months aggressively poaching AI talent from rival companies. Eight Meta Employees Have Left in Recent Weeks According to a Business Insider report, at least eight Meta employees have announced their exit from the company in recent weeks. These employees were reportedly working in the company's AI division in various roles, including researchers, engineers, and senior product leaders. Interestingly, the departing employees are a mix of veterans who have worked at Meta for several years and have helped build the company's core AI infrastructure, the report added. Among the veterans is Bert Maher, who spent 12 years with the tech giant and helped build PyTorch, an open-source software widely used for training and testing AI models. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Maher announced that he is now joining the inference team of Anthropic. Tony Liu, an engineering manager at the company, announced their departure on LinkedIn. The move comes after spending eight years in the company and working on some of the key products, such as Facebook, Instagram, and PyTorch. Liu did not disclose his next venture. Business Insider reported that Meta's AI and machine learning (ML) specialist, Chi-Hao Wu, also left the company after working there for five years. Wu told the publication that those working in the AI division felt work was unstable due to "constant reorganisations". Additionally, Aram Markosyan, a research scientist, has reportedly left the company after a four-year tenure. Two employees, Chaya Nayak and Afroz Mohiuddin, who have worked at Meta for nine years and 14 years, respectively, have reportedly joined OpenAI. Coming to the recent joiners, the publication reports that Avi Verma and Ethan Knight left Superintelligence Labs after working for less than a month to return to their previous employer, OpenAI. Rishabh Agarwal, who joined Meta's AI division just five months ago, announced his exit in a post on X, highlighting that he wanted to take a different kind of risk. While he did not reveal his next destination, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter, Business Insider claimed he is joining Periodic Labs. On veteran employees leaving the company, a Meta spokesperson told the publication, "Some attrition is normal for any organisation of this size. Most of these employees had been with the company for years, and we wish them the best." The spokesperson reportedly added that new hires leaving or going back to their previous employer is not out of the ordinary. While that might be Meta's official stance, the exodus is likely to have impacted the company's months' worth of efforts in poaching these talents and paying them six-to-eight-figure packages.

Top AI researcher Rishabh Agarwal quits Meta's Superintelligence Lab despite million-dollar pay - The Economic Times

Rishabh Agarwal, a prominent AI researcher, has left Meta's Superintelligence Lab (MSL) just months after joining on a million-dollar salary. Sharing the news on X, he wrote, "This is my last week at @AIatMeta. It was a tough decision not to continue with the new Superintelligence TBD lab, especially given the talent and compute density." After spending over seven years at top tech firms such as Google Brain, DeepMind, and Meta, Agarwal said he is ready to take "a different kind of risk". He said that despite receiving a strong pitch from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, he chose to follow Zuckerberg's own advice: "In a world that's changing so fast, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk." Agarwal also stated that he enjoyed working with his team at Meta. After passing out of IIT Bombay with a background in computer science and engineering, Agarwal earned his PhD in AI at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, in Canada. Reflecting on his stint, Agarwal said, "In my short time at Meta, we did push the frontier on post-training for 'thinking' models." When Mark Zuckerberg launched MSL and started hiring aggressively earlier this year, it was positioned as a bold move to catapult the company forward in the AI race. Meta reportedly offered generous pay packages to poach top talent from competitors, including OpenAI, DeepMind, and Apple. According to The Verge, total annual compensation for AI roles at Meta has ranged between $1 million and $1.4 million, including base salary, bonuses, and stock grants. However, Zuckerberg, during an interview in July, emphasised that a lot of the numbers that have been reported are "inaccurate". Whatever the figure may be, for some, the handsome pay package does not appear to matter. Aside from Agarwal, other researchers, including Avi Verma and Ethan Knight, both formerly with OpenAI, have also left MSL. They are now returning to their previous employer. While the exact reasons behind Agarwal's departure may remain unclear, one engineer who turned down Meta's offer told The Verge that the company expected significant "personal sacrifices" in return for the high salaries. These included compromises on work-life balance and, in some cases, on individual values regarding AI development. Such expectations appear to be discouraging not only potential recruits but also new hires.

Meta-Scale AI Partnership Sees Signs Of Strain As Key Executive Departs In Just Two Months, Researchers Pick Rivals: Report - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

The partnership between Meta Platforms Inc. META and Scale AI is reportedly showing signs of strain, with a key executive leaving Meta just two months after the partnership was formed. Ruben Mayer Exits Meta As TBD Labs Turns to Rival Vendors Ruben Mayer, former Senior Vice President of GenAI Product and Operations at Scale AI, has left Meta after only two months. Mayer, who was brought over by Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, disputes some details about his role at Meta but confirmed his departure was due to a "personal matter," according to TechCrunch. Check out the current price of META stock here. Meta's TBD Labs is said to be collaborating with alternative third-party data labeling vendors, including Scale AI's key rivals Mercor and Surge, for its upcoming AI models. Although Meta has invested heavily in Scale AI, researchers at TBD Labs reportedly favor Surge and Mercor, pointing to quality issues with Scale AI's data. Meta, Scale AI did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment. Meta's $14.3 Billion Scale AI Bet Followed by Major Layoffs The recent developments are a significant shift from the initial positive outlook of the partnership. In June, Meta made a strategic minority investment in Scale AI, valuing the company at over $29 billion, as part of a broader partnership to accelerate AI development. Following Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, the San Francisco startup laid off 14% of its total staff, as reported. This was seen as a move to streamline operations and focus on the company's core business areas. The company's new CEO, Jason Droege, attributed the layoffs to "shifts in market demand". SEE ALSO: Everything Blockchain Inc. Joins Flare's XRPFi Standard For Treasury Yield - Benzinga Meta's AI Hiring Freeze Raises Concerns About Future Growth Meta halted hiring following backlash over aggressive recruitment tactics, including nine-figure compensation packages. This freeze, which bans external hires and internal transfers within the AI division, was implemented after Meta recruited over 50 researchers and engineers from competitors, including OpenAI and Alphabet Inc. GOOGL. The current challenges with Scale AI, coupled with the hiring freeze, could potentially impact Meta's AI development efforts, which are crucial to the company's long-term strategy. Benzinga's Edge Rankings place Meta in the 81st percentile for quality and the 85th percentile for growth, reflecting its strong performance in both areas. Check the detailed report here. READ MORE: These $249 AI Glasses Listen To Every Word You Speak -- And Harvard Dropouts Say It Will Unlock 'Infinite Memory' Image via Shutterstock Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. GOOGLAlphabet Inc$212.740.52%Stock Score Locked: Edge Members Only Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Unlock RankingsEdge RankingsMomentum78.71Growth78.48Quality81.19Value51.22Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMETAMeta Platforms Inc$737.79-1.77%Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Mark Zuckerberg Bets Billions On 'Startup Mode' As Meta's Superintelligence Unit Lures Alexandr Wang And Nat Friedman From Top AI Firms - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)

Meta META is reorganizing its artificial intelligence division around compact, high-impact teams as CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushes the company deeper into what he calls "superintelligence labs," Business Insider reported. The company has carved out a secretive group named TBD Lab, staffed with elite engineers poached from leading AI startups and headed by Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI. Meta recently spent $14 billion to acquire a stake in Scale AI as part of its superintelligence push, according to media reports. Zuckerberg said on Meta's latest earnings call, he has "gotten a little bit more convinced around the ability for small, talent-dense teams to be the optimal configuration for driving frontier research." He contrasted the new unit with the thousands of engineers who manage Facebook's news feed, pointing out a cultural move toward agility over scale. Don't Miss: The same firms that backed Uber, Venmo and eBay are investing in this pre-IPO company disrupting a $1.8T market -- and you can too at just $2.90/share. They Sold Their Last Real Estate Company for Nearly $1B -- Now They're Building the Future of U.S. Industrial Growth The Small Team Philosophy Gains Momentum According to an internal memo sent by Wang and reviewed by Business Insider, Meta has reorganized its artificial intelligence division into four specialized groups designed to push its "superintelligence labs" initiative forward. Wang acknowledged in his memo that "org changes can be disruptive," but argued that restructuring was critical for Meta to compete in the race toward superintelligence. The shift mirrors a broader Silicon Valley movement toward lean operations. Kashish Gupta, co-founder of Hightouch, a San Francisco AI startup valued at $1.2 billion, told Business Insider his company relies on about 55 engineers despite raising more than $132 million. A major AI agent launch at the company was developed by only four people, he said, emphasizing that "the people prioritizing work are the engineers themselves or the people they work with." Trending: 7 Million Gamers Already Trust Gameflip With Their Digital Assets -- Now You Can Own a Stake in the Platform Investor Nat Friedman, the former GitHub CEO who now leads Meta's Products and Applied Research group, has echoed this sentiment in a manifesto on his website, writing, "Smaller teams are better. Faster decisions, fewer meetings, more fun." A Fierce AI Talent War Meta has intensified its recruitment strategy by offering nine-figure compensation packages to attract engineers from rivals such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reported. Such high-stakes hiring reflects a belief that a handful of elite researchers can deliver breakthroughs with outsized impact. "You don't need too many -- just a few smart, cream-of-the-crop people to have major breakthroughs and extremely disproportionate impact," AI engineer Yangshun Tay said in an interview with Business Insider. Still, the strategy has created friction. Some longtime employees told Business Insider that the arrival of a lavishly funded unit left them feeling sidelined, with reports of resignation threats and discontent across Meta's broader AI staff. See Also: Kevin O'Leary Says Real Estate's Been a Smart Bet for 200 Years -- This Platform Lets Anyone Tap Into It Can Meta's Small Teams Overcome Big Company Challenges? While compact groups have historically driven innovation, including the 2017 Google research paper "Attention Is All You Need," authored by just eight people, experts question whether the model will scale inside massive corporations like Meta. Alloy Partners CEO Elliott Parker told Business Insider that small teams within conglomerates often deliver useful products and efficiency gains but rarely "transform their parent organization." Meta has already reorganized its AI units several times in recent months, dissolving two divisions in four months to remove overlaps that critics likened to "slime mold," Business Insider says. Despite this turbulence, Zuckerberg remains optimistic. "For the leading research on superintelligence, you really want the smallest group that can hold the whole thing in their head," he said during Meta's earnings call. Read Next: Bill Gates Invests Billions in Green Tech -- This Tree-Free Material Could Be the Next Big Breakthrough Image: USA Today METAMeta Platforms Inc$737.79-1.77%Stock Score Locked: Want to See it? Benzinga Rankings give you vital metrics on any stock - anytime. Reveal Full ScoreEdge RankingsMomentum81.28Growth84.63Quality90.91Value28.27Price TrendShortMediumLongOverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Meta's Scale AI Investment Faces Setbacks Despite Mark Zuckerberg's AI Ambitions

Meta's $14.3B Scale AI Investment Struggles with Leadership Changes and Data Concerns Meta's $14.3 billion Scale AI investment is falling apart just months after the deal. The partnership, meant to boost Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), has been hit by leadership changes and concerns over data quality. One high-profile exit came when Scale AI's former Senior Vice President, Ruben Mayer, left Meta within two months. , Mayer wasn't a part of the TBD Labs unit despite his role in AI data operations. Mayer disputed this version, clarifying to TechCrunch that he was part of TBD Labs from the beginning and left due to personal reasons. Still, his quick departure highlights tensions within the . Researchers inside Meta have raised concerns over the quality of Scale AI's labeling services, preferring vendors like Surge and Mercor. This raises questions about the value of such a massive investment if rival providers are still widely used.

Meta's AI gamble backfires? Eight key staff exit amid billion-dollar talent war: Report

Several of the departing employees are longtime Meta veterans who helped build some of the company's core AI infrastructure. Meta's ambitious new Superintelligence Lab is already facing challenges, with at least eight employees leaving the company less than two months after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the initiative. The division, called Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), aims to bring "personal superintelligence" to everyone. Several of the departing employees are longtime Meta veterans who helped build some of the company's core AI infrastructure, according to Business Insider. For example, Bert Maher, who spent 12 years at Meta, recently left to join Anthropic. Tony Liu, a manager of PyTorch GPU systems for more than eight years, announced his departure to start a newsletter on scaling AI systems. Chi-Hao Wu, an AI specialist, left after five years to become chief AI officer at the startup Memories.ai. Aram Markosyan, a research scientist focused on safety and fairness for large AI models, also departed, though his next move is unclear. Also read: Elon Musk sues Apple and OpenAI, alleges iPhone-ChatGPT deal crushes AI competition Some employees are moving to Meta's biggest AI rival, OpenAI. Chaya Nayak, Meta's director of generative AI product management, joined OpenAI to work on special initiatives. Afroz Mohiuddin, a senior staff engineer who had joined Meta last year, also left for OpenAI. Also read: Apple sues ex-employee for allegedly leaking Apple Watch secrets to Oppo Recent hires have left too. According to Wired, Avi Verma and Ethan Knight returned to OpenAI after very short stints at Meta. Rishabh Agarwal, who joined from Google DeepMind in April, announced he was leaving the company. Agarwal wrote on X that he appreciated Meta's "talent and compute density" but wanted to take "a different kind of risk." These departures raise questions about the future of MSL, which Zuckerberg had hoped would accelerate Meta's progress in artificial general intelligence.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta AI dream team is breaking, with exits from Superintelligence Lab

Zuckerberg's AGI push faces early setbacks amid talent retention challenges Just months after Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his most audacious moonshot yet, with the creation of a Superintelligence Lab to rival OpenAI and Google's DeepMind, the experiment is already facing some serious challenges. According to various reports, Meta's high-profile recruitment spree is being followed by a surprising exodus, with marquee names who were lured in with eye-watering salaries now quietly heading for the exits. The initiative, which had the unmistakable feel of an Avengers assemble moment, promised to bring together the brightest minds in AI and turbocharge Meta's push toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). Zuckerberg's pitch to the incoming talent was simple - come build the future of AI at Meta, and don't worry about the pay. It would be generous. Very generous. But even in a field known for rapid turnover and high-stakes personnel poker, the speed and scale of the departures from Meta's reorganised and rebranded AI division have started to raise eyebrows. Also read: Meta's AI gamble backfires? Eight key staff exit amid billion-dollar talent war: Report At least three top researchers - including Rishabh Agarwal, Avi Verma, and Ethan Knight - have walked away in just the first couple of months. Agarwal, who joined Meta in April 2025 with a million-dollar salary, left barely five months later. Verma and Knight, both OpenAI alums, returned to their former employer after what appears to have been a brief (and rather disillusioning?) stint under Zuckerberg's leadership. Publicly, the reasons for these exits remain vague. Agarwal cited the pull of "a different kind of risk," while taking a jab using Zuckerberg's own words, quoting, "In a world that's changing so fast, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk." But behind the scenes, reports suggest a more complex picture. Also read: Meta offered $100 mn signing bonuses to poach OpenAI employees, says Sam Altman According to Wired, tensions flared over the stark pay disparities between veteran Meta researchers and the newly imported Superintelligence cohort - some of whom received $100 million signing bonuses, and even bigger salaries. While some insiders hoped for an elite dream team being assembled at Meta, what seems to have emerged instead looks like a culture clash - an imbalance of incentives and expectations. It has led to a Superintelligence Lab that may be rich in compute and compensation, but not quite the harmonious cathedral of AGI progress that Zuckerberg had probably envisioned. And it's not just the new hires who are leaving. Long-standing team members from Meta's broader AI efforts are also jumping ship, some heading to OpenAI and Anthropic, others spinning out to startups. In total, up to eight departures have been tallied in recent weeks, as per reports. Meta, for its part, is trying to spin the story with Silicon Valley-standard stoicism. A spokesperson told Wired, "During an intense recruiting process, some people will decide to stay in their current job rather than starting a new one. That's normal." Also read: Meta reportedly offered over $200 million to poach Apple's AI engineer Except, in this case, "normal" includes reports of ten-figure offers being declined, and a lab whose early promise now looks increasingly pretentious. There's an irony to all this that's hard to ignore. In chasing superintelligence with unprecedented velocity, Meta seems to have forgotten the fundamentals of team-building which is all about trust, cohesion, long-term vision. Zuckerberg's pitch to defectors from OpenAI and DeepMind was essentially a mix of blank checks and brute ambition. But the early departures beg the question, if Meta is trying to sprint its way to AGI without first learning how to walk? All of this underscores a deeper issue at the cutting edge of AI and big tech. As the race for AGI intensifies, the battle isn't just about who has the most GPUs or the biggest LLMs. It all boils down to who can keep the smartest people in the room. And if Meta can't retain its talent even with billion-dollar carrots dangling in the air, it may need to take a long, hard look at the culture it's building around its AI dreams. After all, you can hire the Avengers to help build the future of AI. But you still need a story worth staying for and bringing that future to life.