In a surprising move that bucks the trend of Silicon Valley companies aggressively hiring almost anyone with artificial intelligence skills, Meta Platforms Inc. is letting go of more than 600 people from its AI teams.

The news was first reported today by Axios, and Meta today confirmed it in a statement to TechCrunch. The layoffs will affect three of the company’s four AI teams, including its legacy research, product and infrastructure units. The smaller Meta TBD Lab, which is a new division within the company’s Superintelligence Labs organization, is not affected by the cuts.

The layoffs were announced by Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang in an email to employees, who gave the usual excuse that smaller teams get more work done. “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 wrote in the email.

A report by CNBC quoted an anonymous source within Meta as saying that Wang considered the AI unit to be bloated, with teams such as FAIR and product-oriented groups competing for compute resources. Moreover, when Meta went on a hiring spree this summer to create its Superintelligence Labs, that new unit inherited the oversized teams.

Axios said some of the affected employees have been told they’re now in a “non-working notice period” and do not have to go to work. They’ll officially be terminated on Nov. 21, and they’ll be able to use the intervening time to search for another role at Meta if they wish. Should they leave the company, they’ll get at least 16 weeks of severance pay.

Beyond Wang’s reasoning that smaller teams will be able to work more efficiently, the move may be seen as a cost-cutting measure by Meta. The company’s spending has escalated dramatically in the last couple of years, with billions of dollars being spent on building out the data center infrastructure necessary to power its AI systems.

By laying off 600 workers, the company should be able to save several million. Still, that’s only a small dent for a company that estimated its fiscal 2025 expenses will come to around $116 billion.

The layoffs may also have something to do with growing frustration by Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) with the company’s progress in AI. Its Llama 4 models received only a tepid response when they were released in April. It has had very little to show for its AI investments since, while rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic PBC and Google LLC continue to release newer, more powerful AI models.

Meta had already laid off thousands of non-AI staff earlier this year, pushing out “low performers,” but then in the summer it changed tack and went on a mini hiring blitz, dishing out multimillion-dollar salaries to some of the best AI developers in the business. In addition to hiring Wang, Meta also bought a chunk of his former business Scale AI Inc. and hired former GitHub Inc. CEO Nat Friedman and Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross. In addition, it reportedly poached a number of researchers from OpenAI and Google in order to staff the new TBD Lab.

However, Zuckerberg perhaps hinted at the layoffs earlier this summer when he said the company doesn’t need a “massive” team to make breakthroughs in AI. Echoing Wang’s words today, he said that it’s better to go with “the smallest group of people who can fit the whole thing in their head, so there’s just an absolute premium for the best and most talented people.”

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE the layoffs will surprise many, but such things often happen when a new leadership team is put in place and wants to do things differently. “The necessary size of development teams in AI is a never-ending debate, and for now it seems that Wang wants to go with a smaller, more streamlined team,” Mueller said. “Don’t be surprised if the salary savings are invested elsewhere, and quickly. Fortunately for the impacted people, they have skills that are still very much in demand, so they should be able to find new jobs.”

Even so, the layoffs are unprecedented in an AI industry that to date has been all about spending money, and it’ll be interesting to see if any of Meta’s competitors make similar moves in the months to come.

Meta is scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings results next week, when it may reveal more about the reasons for these layoffs — or not.

Photo: Anthony Quintano/Flickr