Meta Reportedly Freezes Hiring in AI Division Amid Restructuring of Superintelligence Labs

Meta has reportedly frozen hiring in its newly created artificial intelligence (AI) division. As per the report, the Menlo Park-based tech giant is no longer pursuing AI researchers and engineers from rival companies or looking to reverse-acquihire personnel from smaller startups working with the technology anymore. While the reason behind the move was not disclosed, the report coincides with claims of the company restructuring the Superintelligence Labs by dividing it into four specialised groups. It is also said that Meta has discussed downsizing the AI team for better workspace management.

Meta Reportedly Pauses Its Aggressive Hiring Policy

According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta has now frozen its hiring spree for its AI division. Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the report claimed that the decision to stop hiring new talent was made last week. So far, the company is said to have hired more than 50 AI researchers at seven and eight-figure salary packages.

In the past few months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has aggressively pursued top AI researchers and engineers from companies such as Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft. The CEO has also acquired several AI startups to absorb their top talent into Meta. In one such publicised incident, the tech giant unsuccessfully attempted to buy former OpenAI COO Mira Murati's startup Thinking Machines Lab, despite making an offer worth $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,700 crore) to the startup's Co-Founder, Andrew Tulloch.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the hiring freeze to WSJ and said it was a “basic organisational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises.”

Interestingly, the hiring freeze comes at a time when a separate report claims that Meta is also restructuring the Superintelligence Labs. As per the report, the entire division is being divided into four groups, where one will focus on AI research, another on developing superintelligence, the third on building and deploying AI tools and features for Meta's products, and the fourth on infrastructure such as data centres and AI hardware.