Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has appointed veteran insider Vishal Shah at a crucial role that oversees the company’s AI products. Shah will now head Product Management for all AI products, reporting directly to Meta’s Head of AI Product, Nat Friedman.
The appointment was reported following an internal memo, coinciding with Meta’s strategic decision to streamline its AI unit. This included recent layoffs in its Superintelligence Labs to make the division more flexible and responsive. Meta’s new strategy now directs its top-tier talent and resources towards dominating the booming generative AI market, where it currently competes fiercely against rivals like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
But who is Vishal Shah?
Shah has been an executive who has been crucial to two of Meta’s most high-profile divisions over the past decade – Instagram and the Metaverse.
Prior to his current role, Vishal Shah served as the Vice President of Metaversem starting 2021. This role saw him leading product efforts for Meta’s ambitious, three-dimensional virtual world concept – one that didn’t take off as highly as Meta had hoped. The project, however, prompted the company’s name change from Facebook to Meta.
However, Shah is perhaps best known for his long and successful tenure leading product development for Instagram. He served as the Vice President of Product Management for Instagram for over six years, during which the platform witnessed intense growth and evolution as a photo-and-video sharing platform. During his time there, Instagram introduced several major, market-shaping features and monetisation strategies that expanded the platform’s reach and revenue.
The shift to AI
Shah’s transfer from the virtual reality platform Metaverse to the forefront of large language models and generative AI signifies the strategic shift in priority within Meta. Zuckerberg has been lately pushing more resources into Meta AI, going on a hiring spree by dedicating unlimited resources to get top industry talent to work in Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Having a seasoned product leader with a deep history in scaling consumer platforms (like Instagram) at the helm hints that Zuckerberg’s commitment to scale up Meta AI and put it at the forefront.
Shah is now tasked with leading the team responsible for turning Meta’s sophisticated AI research into usable, mass-market features, ensuring the company can compete in the next era of computing.
