Meta went on a major hiring spree early this year to supercharge its “Superintelligence” AI team. The team onboarded 50 brightest AI minds from its top rivals (like Google, Apple, xAI, and Anthropic). Not just that, Meta has plans to invest around $72 billion in AI by the end of the year, though experts fear ‘no’. Just two days ago (August 19), Meta internally announced a team reshuffle and restructuring, sparking fears of layoffs. Now, Meta has also paused its AI hiring. Do these signs point to upcoming layoffs? Will Meta join other giants like Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google, who have fired thousands this year? Or is it just a strategic move? Learn more.
Who Has Meta Hired Recently?
This year, Meta hired a wave of AI talent, bringing in the brightest minds from competitors. The superintelligence team added 50 new members:
- 20+ researchers and engineers from the famous OpenAI (who developed ChatGPT).
- 13 from Google.
- 3 from Apple.
- 3 from Elon Musk’s xAI (who developed Grok).
- 2 from Anthropic (another AI startup).
The recent reports also speculated that Meta went as far as spending $300 million on some top hires. However, Meta dismissed the rumors, saying they are just rumors. One thing is clear: Meta would spend a generous amount on these hires from elsewhere.
Meta’s AI Spending and Financial Outlook 2025
- As per the Meta Investor Relations page, it secured a revenue of $47.52 billion (increased by 22% year-over-year) in the second quarter. And its stocks are at a record high and have surpassed Wall Street expectations.
- In just the second quarter of 2025, Meta spent around $17 billion on data centers, servers, chips, and other hardware.
- Meta plans to spend (in AI) a total of $72 billion in 2025, which could exceed the GDP of over 100 countries.
Could this be a substantial financial risk? Notably, experts are worried if this is a good investment in the long term.
Meta on Freezing Its AI Hiring and Restructuring
According to Meta, nothing dramatic is happening inside, just some organizational planning and structuring for “superintelligence.”
A spokesperson for Meta mentioned in an emailed statement to Reuters, “All that’s happening here is some basic organizational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises.”
On August 19, Meta gave a mini shocker with the AI team reorganizing into four divisions, sparking panic (fear of layoffs). The news was shared by Alexandr Wang, Meta’s new Chief AI Officer. According to him:
Large Language Models team
Works on AI technology like Llama. It powers Meta’s AI assistant, just like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) team
This is Meta’s 10-year research lab and will continue to focus on its deep, long-term AI research.
Consumer AI team
Led by Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), Meta will integrate its AI models into everyday products like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook.
Infrastructure team
Led by Aparna Ramani, head of Meta’s all AI Infrastructure, the focus will be on data centers, computing, and hardware.
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