Meta internally announced a new restructuring of its artificial intelligence division amid internal tensions over the technology, people with knowledge of the matter said.


Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has spent the past few months shaking up his company’s artificial intelligence efforts. Now he has taken further action that may compound internal turmoil over the technology.

On Tuesday, Meta announced internally that it is splitting its A.I. division — which is known as Meta Superintelligence Labs — into four groups, two people with knowledge of the situation said. One group will focus on A.I. research; one on a potentially powerful A.I. called “superintelligence”; another on products; and one on infrastructure such as data centers and other A.I. hardware, they said.

The reorganization is likely to be the final one for some time, the people said. The moves are aimed at better organizing Meta so it can get to its goal of superintelligence and develop A.I. products more quickly to compete with others, the people said.

Some A.I. executives are expected to leave, the people said. Meta is also looking at downsizing the A.I. division overall — which could include eliminating roles or moving employees to other parts of the company — because it has grown to thousands of people in recent years, the people said. Discussions remain fluid and no final decisions have been made on the downsizing, they said.

In what would be a shift from Meta’s using only its own technology to power its A.I. products, the company is also actively exploring using third-party artificial intelligence models to do so, the people said. That could include building on other “open-source” A.I. models, which are freely available, or licensing “closed-source” models from other companies.

The changes follow months of tumult and restructuring at Meta over its A.I. strategy. Mr. Zuckerberg, 41, is sparing no expense and is willing to upend his company to stay relevant in A.I. as the push to create the most advanced technology has boiled down to a few key players. How Meta will fare is being closely watched, as the A.I. race creates new winners and losers.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s determination was evident in June after Meta struggled to advance its newest A.I. models. That month, the company announced a superintelligence lab dedicated to creating an A.I. more powerful than the human brain. Meta invested $14.3 billion in the start-up Scale AI and brought on Alexandr Wang, its chief executive, as its new chief A.I. officer. Meta also offered some nine-figure pay packages to hire researchers from rivals like OpenAI and Google, igniting a Silicon Valley poaching war.