Meta‘s ambitious push into artificial intelligence is hitting turbulence, with AI prodigy Alexandr Wang reportedly frustrated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hands-on management style.
Wang, 28, who joined Meta earlier this year after the company paid over $14 billion for a 49% stake in his startup Scale AI, was meant to be the face of Zuckerberg’s AI revival.
According to the Financial Times, Wang privately told associates that Zuckerberg’s tight control of the AI initiative is “suffocating” progress.
The tension comes amid repeated layoffs, high-profile executive departures, rushed AI product launches, and massive spending that has rattled both staff and investors.
A major warning sign emerged earlier this year with the rollout of Meta’s Llama 4 model, Yahoo reported.
Despite high expectations, Llama 4 lagged behind competitors on benchmarks like coding and complex reasoning.
Meta was also accused of manipulating AI leaderboards by submitting a customized version for rankings.
Insiders pointed to weak training data, limited testing, and internal dysfunction as key factors.
“Our tools and products became fragmented because so many teams were rooting for their own products that no one was really thinking about how they worked together,” a Meta insider told the FT.
Alexandr Wang Leads Meta’s Secretive TBD Lab
Rather than slowing down, Zuckerberg ramped up efforts, launching a hiring blitz across Silicon Valley, offering compensation packages worth up to $100 million, and pouring tens of billions into AI infrastructure.
According to the NY Post, Wang leads the secretive TBD Lab, tasked with developing Meta’s next flagship AI model, codenamed “Avocado.”
However, some employees have questioned whether Wang is prepared to manage Meta-scale research teams, noting his background is in AI data services rather than frontier AI development.
Leadership tensions extended to Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, who faced pressure to rapidly integrate AI models into Meta products.
This led to rushed rollouts, including the AI-generated video feed “Vibes,” aimed at competing with OpenAI’s Sora.
The turbulence has prompted top executives to leave. Jennifer Newstead, Meta’s longtime chief legal officer, joined Apple.
Chief revenue officer John Hegeman departed to start a new venture, while Turing Award-winning AI scientist Yann LeCun exited after clashing with Wang over research priorities. Meta also laid off 600 AI team members to streamline decision-making.
All this unfolds amid staggering spending, with Meta expected to invest at least $70 billion in AI this year, potentially exceeding $100 billion annually. Investors have reacted nervously, and Meta shares fell sharply in November over concerns about free cash flow.
Meta has disputed aspects of the FT report, emphasizing that AI experimentation is routine and leaderboard rankings can be misleading.
The company also stated that claims of internal upheaval and chatbot policy issues were “erroneous and inconsistent” with its rules.
Originally published on vcpost.com
