Joelle Pineau, Vice President of AI Research at Meta Platforms Inc. META, announced her decision to leave the company in May.

Details of Departure

Pineau shared the news of her resignation in a Facebook post on Tuesday. She joined Meta in May 2017, where she led the company’s Fundamental AI Research lab (Fair), which is directed by Yann LeCun.

During her tenure, Pineau and her team have developed key projects that have become crucial to Meta’s operations, including PyTorch, FAISS, Roberta, Dino, Llama, SAM, Codegen, and Audiobox.

Reflections and Future Plans

Pineau expressed her gratitude towards her managers at Meta, including Michael Schroepfer, Jerome Pesenti, Michael Abrash, and Chris Cox. She also recognized her team and collaborators, who she believes have been vital in shaping the future of AI.

In an interview with the Financial Times in October, she stated, “Meta was the only [company] that had a commitment to open science and open research, so I didn’t bother interviewing anywhere else.”

With Pineau’s last day set for May 30, she plans to take some time before embarking on her next career adventure.

Significance of Her Departure

Pineau’s exit comes at an important time for Meta as the company significantly increases its investment in AI, with plans to allocate $65 billion on AI infrastructure by 2025. This strategy aligns with CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s focus on prioritizing AI at Meta, particularly with the development of Llama, Meta’s open-source large language model.

Zuckerberg aims to establish Llama as the industry standard and expand Meta’s AI chatbot across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with a target of reaching one billion users this year. Currently, 600 million users access Meta AI each month.

However, Pineau’s departure may create challenges for Meta as it faces competition from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk‘s xAI. Last year, Meta reorganized to have its AI research unit report to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, a structure that may also feel the impact of Pineau’s exit.

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