Meta (META.US) restructures AI team: Following the layoffs of hundreds of employees, the head of the metaverse business is transferred to work on AI.

After laying off hundreds of people last week, Meta Platforms (META.US) has reassigned its senior executives in the metaverse business to be in charge of artificial intelligence products, indicating that the company is making a strong effort to participate in the intense artificial intelligence competition while still working on building its team. According to sources, Vishal Shah will move to the Meta Superintelligence Labs team. Shah has been leading Meta's efforts in building the metaverse for the past four years. An internal memo sent to employees on Monday showed that Shah will move to the Meta Superintelligence Labs team to lead artificial intelligence products. Before joining the metaverse, Shah was in charge of products at Instagram. He will be responsible for integrating the company's artificial intelligence technologies (including Meta AI chat Siasun Robot & Automation) into various applications and wearable devices at Meta. With Shah's job change, Meta will also promote two other executives in its metaverse division. The metaverse division involves virtual and augmented reality products and software. According to a source, Gabe Aul, who has been leading the development of the company's virtual world product Meta Horizon, will take over all metaverse work, including virtual avatars and content experiences. Ryan Cairns, in charge of all Quest virtual reality hardware and its VR operating system Meta Horizon OS, will continue in his role but will now report directly to Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence a top priority for the company's development and has invested hundreds of billions of dollars this year in data centers and artificial intelligence researchers to keep up with competitors such as OpenAI and Alphabet Inc. Class C under Alphabet (GOOGL.US). However, Meta laid off about 600 people in its artificial intelligence department last week, with Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang telling colleagues that this move will help the department accelerate its development. Zuckerberg has been disappointed with the company's progress in artificial intelligence and has shown a strong interest in accelerating AI development earlier this year. In recent months, there have been multiple reorganizations within the department. In addition to personally recruiting AI researchers, Zuckerberg has also created a new lab called the "TBD Lab" internally to develop new, cutting-edge AI models. Bosworth told employees that metaverse work is still important. In a memo, he wrote that this priority "remains unchanged and remains a priority for the entire company." Bosworth stated, "We have proven our point to the industry and we continue to see competitors entering this field trying to catch up with us, so we need to continue to consolidate our hard-won advantage." Meta is set to report third-quarter earnings after the market closes on Wednesday, with artificial intelligence expected to be a focus of Zuckerberg's attention on the investor call.