Meta Freezes AI Hiring Amid Major Team Reshuffle - Here’s Why It Matters
Meta slams brakes on artificial intelligence recruitment—just as competitors pour billions into the space.
The Hiring Deep Freeze
No new AI talent coming through Meta's doors. The company halts all artificial intelligence hiring indefinitely while reorganizing existing teams. Internal memos cite 'strategic realignment' as the driving force.
Restructuring Reality
Current AI staff get reshuffled into new roles. Some teams face consolidation while others get completely disbanded. The move follows aggressive hiring sprees throughout 2023 and 2024.
Market Implications
Wall Street barely blinked—probably too busy calculating how much shareholder value gets 'disrupted' with each pivot. Meanwhile, rivals like Google and OpenAI continue raiding the talent pool.
Meta replaces the Llama team
BREAKING: Meta, $META, is freezing all AI hiring, per WSJ.
This comes just days after Meta offered compensation packages exceeding $100M for some AI engineer hires.
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) August 21, 2025
The tech company disclosed that the new AI hires replaced the previous AGI Foundation team, which developed the company’s latest Llama large language models. However, the team drew criticism from the company’s executives this spring, following the less-than-expected underperformance of the latest Llama models. Its dissolution was part of the company’s reorganization. Three members of the previous team left the company on August 15.
Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, became personally involved in recruiting AI engineers and researchers after the dismal release of the latest Llama models in April. The tech boss approached employees of other AI labs through email and WhatsApp messages with compensation offers reaching hundreds of millions of dollars. Cryptopolitan previously reported that Zuckerberg created a private WhatsApp group chat labeled “Recruiting Party,” where top bosses traded candidate ideas. The Meta CEO offered the Thinking Machine Lab’s co-founder, Andrew Tulloch, a deal worth over $1.5 billion, which Tulloch declined.
Zuckerberg then decided to hire Wang, Scale AI’s co-founder, to spearhead the hiring process. He secured Wang by acquiring a $14 billion stake in Scale AI. The Meta boss also brought in the co-founder of SAFE Superintelligence, Daniel Gross, and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. He secured the duo by buying a stake in their NFDG venture firm. The tech company had hired over 20 OpenAI engineers and researchers, 13 from Google, three from Apple, three from xAI, and two from Anthropic as of mid-August.
Wang oversees the AI team reshuffling
The new Chief AI Officer said he’s overseeing the reorganization as his company doubled down on its AI team reshuffle. The process, which involved thousands of product managers, engineers, and scientists, resulted in the expected departure of a few executives. At least one team was also shut down entirely.
Wang acknowledged through a recent email to employees that the reorganization could be disruptive. However, he pointed out that the new structure WOULD allow the AI team to reach superintelligence faster over the long term. Meanwhile, investors seemed to have mixed feelings as the company’s stock dropped 2% following news of the reshuffle.
“We think the team at Meta, after Zuckerberg’s hiring spree, will need a period of acclimation before it finds the velocity to develop more competitive solutions,” said Wang. However, he noted that his company’s mission, by contrast, had remained the same as it was before the new hires. Wang emphasized that the tech firm looked to improve products that promoted more user engagement on its social media platforms, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. According to the company’s Q2 financial report, advertising on those platforms reached $46.6 billion.
KEY Difference Wire: the secret tool crypto projects use to get guaranteed media coverage
