Meta Platforms has paused hiring across its artificial intelligence division after months of aggressive recruitment, sources familiar with the development revealed.
The freeze, which began last week, is part of a wider corporate restructuring and also bars existing staff from transferring between teams within the AI unit. The company has not indicated how long the freeze will last.
“Exceptions may be made for external hires, but only with approval from Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang,” one source said. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the decision, framing it as “basic organizational planning — building a strong structure for our new superintelligence initiatives after an intense recruitment drive and annual budget reviews.”
Meta has been among the most aggressive players in the AI talent race, luring researchers with nine-figure compensation packages and acquiring startups to secure key personnel. Analysts have voiced concerns that such lavish spending — much of it in stock-based compensation — could weigh on shareholder returns.
As part of its restructuring, Meta has reorganized its AI operations into four groups: TBD Lab, focused on superintelligence; an AI products team; an infrastructure unit; and a long-term research arm called Fundamental AI Research. The shake-up follows criticism of its former AGI Foundations group, which built the Llama large language models but failed to meet performance expectations with its most recent release.
Following that release in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg became personally involved in talent poaching, reaching out to top researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and other labs. Some offers reportedly topped $100 million in total pay, including one to Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Andrew Tulloch valued at $1.5 billion — which he declined.
To bolster its AI push, Meta also recruited Scale AI co-founder Alexandr Wang, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Safe Superintelligence co-founder Daniel Gross, often taking stakes in their ventures as part of the deal. By mid-August, the company had hired more than 50 AI researchers and engineers from rivals such as OpenAI, Google, Apple, xAI, and Anthropic.
Rising investor concern over the soaring cost of AI expansion has weighed on tech stocks. In an August 18 note, Morgan Stanley analysts cautioned that escalating stock-based pay at Meta and Google could either lead to major breakthroughs or dilute shareholder value if innovation falls short.
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