Meta to Cut 600 AI Jobs After Massive Hiring Spree in 2025

Meta is cutting roughly 600 jobs from its artificial intelligence teams as part of a wider restructuring effort. 

The layoffs are a surprising turn for the Facebook parent company, which spent much of the last two years aggressively expanding its AI ambitions.

The job cuts affect Meta’s Superintelligence Labs and its long-standing research arm, FAIR, or Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research. 

They follow a period of significant hiring and spending across Meta’s AI divisions, where thousands of engineers were brought on to accelerate work on large language models and generative AI systems.

The Hiring Blitz That Preceded the Cuts

Earlier in 2025, Meta made headlines for offering some of the most lucrative pay packages in Silicon Valley. Reports claimed that top AI researchers received signing bonuses worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and stock. 

The company was said to have approached high-profile executives from other tech firms and AI start-ups, aiming to attract the brightest minds to its growing superintelligence initiative.

Meta also made a major investment in Scale AI, acquiring a 49% stake in the company and hiring its former CEO to lead the new Superintelligence Labs. 

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg described the effort as a multibillion-dollar bet to help Meta compete with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic.

Why Meta Says It’s Cutting Jobs

The company has framed the layoffs as a strategic move rather than a retreat. Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang told employees that smaller, more focused teams would improve speed and efficiency. 

The goal, he said, is to build what Zuckerberg calls “small, talent-dense teams” capable of faster innovation and fewer internal bottlenecks.

Analysts, however, view the move as a response to rising costs and the pressure to show results from Meta’s massive AI spending. After two years of heavy recruitment, the company now appears to be consolidating around core projects rather than maintaining sprawling research units.

The Race for AI Leadership

Meta’s restructuring comes as the global AI race is accelerating. OpenAI continues to lead the pace with new video and reasoning tools, while Google DeepMind is expanding its work in robotics and large-scale modeling. 

Meta’s challenge is to keep pace with these rivals while integrating its AI breakthroughs into everyday products across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

What It Means for Meta and the Wider Industry

This shake-up underscores a broader tech trend: the shift from rapid expansion to selective efficiency. Tech giants that once hired aggressively are now refining their teams and focusing on proven outcomes rather than headcount. 

For Meta, success will now depend on how well it can turn years of AI research into practical, profitable products.

For workers in the AI field, the layoffs highlight an emerging reality. Even as investment in artificial intelligence grows, companies are prioritizing agility and precision over sheer scale. 

And Meta’s next steps will likely determine whether this approach can still deliver on its ambitious vision of superintelligence.

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