Meta AI Layoffs: The End Of The AI Hype?
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On October 22, 2025, Meta announced it was laying off approximately 600 employees from its artificial intelligence division.
The news was very surprising (at least to me), especially since the company had just spent the summer on an aggressive and incredibly expensive campaign to hire the world’s top AI talent.
So, what’s really going on?
If you were hoping for an end of the AI hype, I have to disappoint you: This isn’t a sign that Meta is backing away from AI.
Instead, it’s a radical, high-stakes pivot in strategy. Here’s a breakdown of the timeline and what it all means.
A Six-Month Strategic Overhaul
To understand the layoffs, you have to look at the chain of events that began six months ago:
April 2025: The Llama 4 Disappointment
Meta launched its latest AI model, Llama 4, to a “lukewarm reception”.
Reports suggest CEO Mark Zuckerberg was frustrated with the company’s slow progress compared to rivals like OpenAI and Google, triggering a major rethink of their entire AI strategy.
June-August 2025: The Summer of Spending
Meta went on the offensive. In June, it invested $14.3 billion in the AI data company Scale AI, and in a pivotal move, hired its CEO, Alexandr Wang, to be Meta’s new Chief AI Officer (CAIO).
This was followed by a massive hiring spree, poaching elite researchers from competitors with compensation packages reportedly reaching into the millions (there were reports of signing bonuses of 100 million dollars or more).
These new hires were placed in a new, team, called the “TBD Lab”. Alexandr Wang became the head of this team and the newly created Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL).
Late August 2025: The Hiring Freeze
After months of aggressive recruiting, Meta abruptly paused all AI hiring for what it called “basic organizational planning”. This was the moment the company shifted from acquiring talent to deciding how to structure its new, more focused division.
October 22, 2025: The Layoffs
The “planning” phase concluded with the targeted elimination of 600 roles. This wasn’t a cost-cutting measure but the final, decisive step in the strategic overhaul.
Who Was Cut and Who Was Spared
The layoffs were not random; they were surgical.
They were made to mainly focus the company’s resources on the TBD Lab, remove friction, overlapping responsibilities and other inefficiencies.
The Affected Divisions
Three of the four pillars of the MSL were impacted:
- Fundamental AI Research (FAIR): Meta’s respected, long-standing research lab known for its foundational, often open-source, work.
- Product-related AI Teams: The groups responsible for integrating AI features into apps like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
- AI Infrastructure: The engineers who build and maintain the massive data centers and computing power needed to run AI models.
Reports indicate that’s mostly the FAIR team that was impacted - they don’t seem to fall into the “top talent” category.
The Protected Division
The TBD Lab, the new, high-profile group, was completely untouched by the layoffs.
This is where all the elite talent hired over the summer now works, directly under CAIO Alexandr Wang. Their sole mission is to build Meta’s next-generation “superintelligence” model.
Not only was this team spared, but Meta confirmed it will continue to hire for it.
What This Means for Meta’s Future in AI (And The AI Hype)
This restructuring is a radical pivot from Meta’s previous strategy. Here are the key takeaways :
From Open Research to a Closed Race for AGI: Meta seems to be moving away from its well-known open-source approach, where it shared its research and models broadly. It is now entering a direct, closed-model race against Google and OpenAI to build Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or “superintelligence”.
Focus Over Breadth: The company is sacrificing breadth for focus. Instead of funding various research, product, and infrastructure projects more or less equally, it is funneling its absolute best resources, talent, and money into a single, high-stakes bet: the TBD Lab.
Consolidating Power: The move solidifies Alexandr Wang’s control over the entire AI division and aligns with Mark Zuckerberg’s belief that breakthroughs come from “small, talent-dense teams” rather than large, bureaucratic organizations.
In short, the layoffs are not a retreat. They are a strategic doubling-down.
Meta has chosen its champions, pruned the surrounding organization to support them, and is betting its entire AI future on one elite team’s ability to win the race for superintelligence.