Meta Laying Off 600 AI Workers

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) just announced layoffs impacting roughly 600 employees across its AI divisions — including teams working on infrastructure and Fundamental AI Research. The move comes just months after Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI and brought on its CEO, Alexandr Wang, as Meta’s new Chief AI Officer.

In a memo obtained by CNBC, affected employees were told they’ll receive 16 weeks of severance pay, plus two additional weeks for every year of service. This comes amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s frustration with the company’s AI progress — especially after the Llama 4 models underwhelmed developers earlier this year.

Now, Meta is restructuring under a new unit called Meta Superintelligence Labs, co-led by Wang and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, as it races to compete with OpenAI and Google in the global AI arms race.

Meanwhile, Meta is also investing heavily in its Hyperion data center project in Louisiana — a $27 billion infrastructure build that could cover a footprint as large as Manhattan.

Will these layoffs help Meta move faster, or signal deeper trouble inside Zuckerberg’s AI ambitions?