Meta's elite AI unit sparks tension with old guard

Meta Platforms spent millions of dollars this summer recruiting AI stars. Now comes the hard part of making them work with their new colleagues.

- Meghan Bobrowsky, Keach Hagey & Berber Jin

Some of Mark Zuckerberg's expensive new recruits have already defected to other AI labs. Existing employees have jockeyed for new spots within Meta's restructured AI organization or lobbied for raises in light of the influx of highly paid new colleagues. At least one who was given a grant worth millions of dollars left anyway, saying they believed newcomers were still making multiples more.

The pay packages may be massive, and the company might be worth nearly $2 trillion. But at its core, Meta is facing a quintessential management problem: how to recruit and retain top-tier talent while keeping remaining employees satisfied, and maintaining harmony across the organization.

"If you don't lay the groundwork culturally for bringing in these stars, you're going to end up burning a bunch of them out and pissing them off, and a bunch of them are going to quit and you're going to waste millions of dollars," said Laszlo Bock, a tech industry adviser and former head of people operations at Google.

The new AI group's most elite squad of AI researchers—members of the so-called TBD Lab—sit in an area of the company's Menlo Park headquarters near Zuckerberg's desk that requires special badge access for entry, according to people familiar with the matter. Their work is closely guarded, and the names of its members aren't visible on the company's internal organization chart. Other names in the organization are viewable.