# Meta Platforms

Meta is the most-watched 2026 case study in what happens when an incumbent tries to buy itself an AI lab from outside its own talent pool. The Scale AI acqui-hire installed [[alexandr-wang]] as Chief AI Officer running Superintelligence Labs (SSL); within four months retention had fallen to 64%, eight named researchers had left, and [[andrew-bosworth]] had stood up a parallel Applied AI Engineering org under VP Maher Saba that reports around Wang rather than to him.

The May 2026 layoff wave (8,000 company-wide, ~600 inside SSL specifically) is the visible moment, covered in [[meta-ai-employees-miserable]]. The pattern around it — Yann LeCun publicly calling Wang "inexperienced," Zuckerberg's $135B AI capex commitment, the Fortune report on screen-and-keystroke tracking to train internal tools — is the more important story.

Useful for cross-referencing whenever Meta-specific decisions show up: AI personnel moves, Llama model releases, Reality Labs re-org news, internal-mandate stories.

Cross-references: [[ai-bubble-pale-horses]], [[ceo-ai-psychosis]], [[ai-sycophancy-loop]], [[tokenmaxxing]].