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As part of a larger reorganisation of its "Superintelligence Lab," Meta unexpectedly stopped hiring in its artificial intelligence branch last week, according to sources familiar with the situation who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. Both internal team transfers and external hires are prohibited under the freeze, with Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang's consent needed for exceptions. The dramatic action comes after Meta engaged in an unparalleled AI talent battle, hiring more than 50 researchers and engineers from rivals such as Apple, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic. One researcher reportedly promised $1.5 billion in total remuneration, while other candidates received packages of up to $100 million.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed his active engagement in the crucial hiring process by personally contacting targets via WhatsApp and email.Meta acquired a $14 billion interest in Scale AI to hire co-founder Alexandr Wang as its chief AI officer in order to attract top talent. Additionally, the business hired Daniel Gross, a co-founder of Safe Superintelligence, and Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub, whose courting entailed Meta proposing to purchase shares in their venture capital firm. Mark Zuckerberg also went on to poach ChatGPT co-creator Shengjia Zhao.

Significant departures from Meta's AI ranks have resulted from the restructure, undermining the company's enormous investment through a brain drain. The New York Times reports that important individuals, like as research scientist Angela Fan, who contributed to the development of Meta's Llama AI model, recently departed for OpenAI. The software business Figma is hiring Loredana Crisan, a generative AI vice president, as its chief design officer. Joelle Pineau, the former head of AI research, left earlier this year to work for the AI firm Cohere. The unsatisfactory performance of Meta's most recent AI models, which were launched in April, is the cause of the chaos. This setback prompted Zuckerberg to become personally involved in recruiting new talent and dissolving the AGI Foundations team that had overseen the failed project.

Shengjia Zhao, the top AI scientist at Meta and a former OpenAI researcher, has been interviewing current staff members for new positions under the restructured organisation, asking them about their prior work and causing apprehension among long-time colleagues.The four areas of Meta's AI division are presently infrastructure, long-term exploration initiatives, AI products, and superintelligence research.

The hiring freeze reflects growing investor scrutiny over Meta's spiraling AI costs, which have raised questions about return on investment. Meta's capital expenditures could reach $72 billion this year, primarily for AI data centers and researcher salaries. The company's aggressive spending has contributed to recent technology stock selloffs as investors question whether massive AI investments will generate proportional returns.

The freeze implies that Meta is combining its disparate AI initiatives in an effort to save expenses.Given the increasing demand on the larger tech sector to provide measurable returns on AI investments, the timing is especially difficult.