Meta is cutting around 600 jobs from its Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL)—the division driving the company’s biggest artificial intelligence ambitions. The move comes after Meta poured billions into recruiting top AI talent from rivals such as OpenAI, DeepMind, and Apple. The layoffs are reportedly limited to the MSL unit, which has approximately 3,000 employees worldwide.
According to foreign media reports citing an internal memo, Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang confirmed the job cuts on Wednesday, October 22. The affected staff are mainly based in Meta’s offices across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
“Earlier today, we made some changes to MSL to move us toward being the most agile and talent-dense team in the industry. By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Wang reportedly said in the memo.
Billion-dollar hiring spree meets internal reshuffle
The layoffs come just months after Mark Zuckerberg launched an aggressive hiring drive to bring in leading AI researchers. Since hiring Wang the former CEO of Scale AI, earlier this year, Meta has invested heavily in building what Zuckerberg calls “personal superintelligence,” an AI system he believes could one day surpass human capabilities.
These latest cuts, however, do not affect Meta’s core AI team, which is developing the “personal superintelligence” project. The layoffs have instead hit overlapping research and infrastructure groups within MSL.
What is Meta superintelligence labs?
Formed in June 2025, MSL was built around top recruits from Scale AI, following Meta’s investment of over $14.3 billion in the data labelling startup. The division’s mission is to lead Meta’s long-term AI vision particularly in developing human-like intelligence that users can personalise.
Zuckerberg described his vision in a blog post, “We believe in putting this power in people’s hands to direct it toward what they value in their own lives […] This is distinct from others in the industry who believe superintelligence should be directed centrally towards automating all valuable work, and then humanity will live on a dole of its output.”
Over recent months, MSL became one of Meta’s costliest projects, luring top talent with million-dollar compensation packages. This, however, reportedly caused tension inside Meta, especially among veteran employees who saw pay disparities widen.
In August, the division was reorganised into four sub-units FAIR (AI research), Artificial Superintelligence Lab (ASL), an AI products group, and an infrastructure team focusing on data centres and hardware.
Why now and who’s affected?
The layoffs are part of a wider restructuring to eliminate overlapping roles and speed up AI product development. Reports from international outlets say the move aims to streamline Meta’s sprawling AI operations and reduce what executives see as “organisational bloat.”
Wang said Meta is working to reassign many of the affected staff: “We are supporting the majority of those impacted in finding new roles at the company. We have spun up a tiger team of recruiters to help this group find the right match for their expertise and land in roles through an expedited hiring process.”
Some long-time employees also left MSL voluntarily last month, including senior engineers who helped build Meta’s early AI infrastructure. Besides the MSL layoffs, Meta has reportedly let go of over 100 employees in its risk review team, which oversees product compliance with privacy regulations. The company plans to automate most of these review processes going forward.
Is Meta slowing down on AI?
Despite the cuts, Meta insists it remains deeply committed to AI and its “personal superintelligence” goal. “This by no means signals any decrease in investment. In fact, we will continue to hire industry-leading AI-native talent. Our goal is to enable MSL to move faster. We remain excited about the models we are training, our ambitious compute plans, and the products we are building, and I’m confident in our path to superintelligence,” Wang said.
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