Meta, after offering $100 million pay packages to attract top AI talent, has put hiring on hold, the Wall Street Journal reported. This, per the outlet, comes after the company hired more than 50 AI researchers and engineers in its push to strengthen its position in the artificial intelligence sector.
The freeze, which took effect last week, also bars employees from internal transfers. However, Meta has not communicated how long the pause will remain in place, leaving employees uncertain about the timeline, WSJ further reported.
A Meta spokesperson tagged it as “organisational planning”.
“All that’s happening here is some basic organisational planning: creating a solid structure for our new superintelligence efforts after bringing people on board and undertaking yearly budgeting and planning exercises,” Reuters quoted a Meta spokesperson as saying.
The latest reorganisation at the Zuckerberg-led company divides AI operations into four teams, WSJ reported. These, per the outlet, are – TBD Lab, which focuses on superintelligence – the division for which the company recently hired people, another building AI-powered products, while a third develops the underlying infrastructure to support them. The fourth group, Fundamental AI Research, concentrates on long-term, exploratory projects and was largely unaffected by the shake-up.
Before the restructuring, Meta’s AGI Foundations was responsible for developing the latest versions of its large language model, Llama. But after falling short of internal expectations, the team was ultimately dissolved, The Information reported.
The Journal reported that after the Llama model was released in April, Zuckerberg got more interested in hiring AI talent, and approached people via mail, WhatsApp messages and more.
Meta not only offered nine-figure packages to people but also used reverse acquisition techniques. Of the 50 new hires, it hired at least 13 people from Google, three from Apple, three from xAI, and two from Anthropic for a total of 50-plus new employees.
For instance, Zuckerberg offered lucrative packages to Anthropic staff, but they refused, saying that “some things can’t be bought”. First, Zuckerberg tried to hire the company’s founder, Mira Murati, who previously served as OpenAI’s CTO, with a proposal to acquire the startup. Murati, however, rejected the offer.
Then, he reached out to other employees, including co-founder Andrew Tulloch. Tulloch, too, turned down the $1 billion offer.
The outlet earlier reported that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is offering huge packages to lure top talent from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Google’s Gemini, and more.