Meta is at it again. In a move that stunned both engineers and analysts, the company confirmed layoffs of around 600 AI staff—from infrastructure teams to applied research—according to a report on AP News.
Yet, oddly enough, hiring hasn’t stopped. Meta’s “superintelligence” lab keeps expanding like a black hole swallowing its own galaxy.
If you squint, this feels eerily similar to Google’s AI restructuring earlier this year. Big Tech is pivoting—less about “AI everywhere,” more about “AI that rules them all.”
Mark Zuckerberg has been vocal about racing toward artificial general intelligence, echoing ambitions seen in OpenAI’s latest partnership with Microsoft.
But here’s the kicker: these layoffs hit while Meta is doubling down on compute-heavy research and model scaling.
It’s like cleaning house before throwing a bigger party. The irony isn’t lost on anyone following the company’s AI odyssey since the launch of Meta’s Llama 3 models.
Those open models fueled startups and researchers, yet internally, the vibe now feels—well, colder.
Talking to a few ex-employees (off-record, of course), many say it’s not just cost-cutting; it’s consolidation.
One even joked, “They’re pruning the forest before building the Death Star.” Dramatic, sure—but not far off.
The global AI arms race has gotten so intense that even giants like Meta have to reshuffle troops to stay in the fight.
My two cents? This might be less of a crisis and more of a realignment.
The push for “superintelligence” may sound sci-fi, but it’s clearly a corporate strategy—one that could redefine who dominates AI infrastructure and safety standards in the next decade.
Whether that’s brilliance or hubris, time will tell.
