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Meta Lays Off 600 From 'Bloated' AI Unit (cnbc.com)

(Wednesday October 22, 2025 @11:30PM (BeauHD) from the scaling-down dept.)


Meta is [1]laying off about 600 employees from its AI division as part of a restructuring to streamline operations and solidify Alexandr Wang's leadership over the company's AI strategy. "Workers across Meta's AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR) and other product-related positions will be impacted," notes CNBC. "However, the cuts did not impact employees within TBD Labs, which includes many of the top-tier AI hires brought into the social media company this summer." From the report:

> Those employees, overseen by Wang, were spared by the layoffs, underscoring Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's bet on his expensive hires versus the legacy employees, the people said. Within Meta, the AI unit was considered to be bloated, with teams like FAIR and more product-oriented groups often vying for computing resources, the people said. When the company's new hires joined the company to create Superintelligence Labs, it inherited the oversized Meta AI unit, they said. The layoffs are an attempt by Meta to continue trim the department and further cement Wang's role in steering the company's AI strategy. Following the cuts, Meta's Superintelligence Labs' workforce now sits at just under 3,000, the people said.



[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/meta-layoffs-ai.html


It shows monopolies have already formed (Score:2)

by rsilvergun ( 571051 )

In the past they wouldn't risk firing that many engineers because they would end up at potential competitors. Facebook has already figured out they can either run those competitors out of business or make back room deals with them if they are one of the big guys.

What annoys me as we all grew up with TV and movies telling us how bad corporations are and if you learn how bad they really are in the real world it's actually worse than TVs and movies make it out to be.

And despite all that it takes almos

Re: (Score:2)

by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )

Or maybe, just maybe, the "AI" teams *were* actually bloated.

Maybe they were staffed with people who claimed they knew how to build AI products but couldn't actually deliver.

Or maybe they figured out that the stuff they were promising to accomplish, was mostly vapor.

Or maybe it was just politics in a big, bureaucratic organization.

Re: (Score:1)

by Anonymous Coward

This is fun...

Or maybe the “AI revolution” costs more than it earns.

Or maybe Alexandr Wang wanted to look decisive.

Or maybe research doesn’t impress Wall Street.

Or maybe streamlining sounds better than panic.

Or maybe the hype cycle peaked, and now it’s cleanup time.

Or maybe they needed scapegoats for slow progress.

Or maybe someone’s bonus depends on cutting headcount.

Or maybe they’re betting on fewer people and more buzzwords.

Re: (Score:3)

by ndsurvivor ( 891239 )

To me the bottom line is that the KKK could not call blacks the n word anymore, they could not degrade women anymore, so they re-branded themselves as MAGAs, re-branded the n word as: "woke", and degrading women as: "DEI". They don't give a crap about anything else. As long as they can yell: "WOKE" to anybody who believes in equality between black and white people, and yell: "DEI" to anybody who believes equality between Men and Women, then the MAGAs are happy. In a way it is working for White Men, as yo

Re: (Score:2)

by registrations_suck ( 1075251 )

I didn't grow up with TVs and movies telling me corporations are bad.

I'm sorry you had such a shitty childhood, but it certainly explains all your posts.

bad management (Score:3)

by gurps_npc ( 621217 )

They got impressed with the new guys, so they bought them out.

Their old employees were almost certainly good employees. Otherwise they would have fired them BEFORE the take over.

But after they bought out the new guys they thought that it would be stupid to buy new cow if old cow was good cow. So old cow must be bad cow. Sell old cow.

The truth is most likely that all the people involved EXCEPT the management are probably extremely competent. The management thought to save money in the place they were trying to spend money. That has to be the stupidest idea ever. If it was worth it to buy the company, then they needed all the smart people, including the old employees.

Why? Because there is the myth of the singular genius that invents the product. Science is not engineering. Engineering is not science. The AI 'inventors' are hiring engineers, not scientists. They are figuring out how to do something the scientists already have theorized is possible.

Any AI improvements will be done by a whole team of very qualified engineers doing the hard work of bringing the scientific ideas to reality. No one man - or group of men - is going to be that much better than other people. More smart people will however speed up the process.

Management was stupid. If hiring them was smart, then keeping their old employees was also smart.

In fact (Score:2)

by GrahamJ ( 241784 )

Every leader at meta is a wang

Is that wise? (Score:1)

by Anonymous Coward

An AI that is already broken having its staff cut?

Questionable day.

Ask somebody something.