Meta's Head of AI Research, Joelle Pineau, has announced her departure from the company, effective May 30, 2025. Pineau, who has been with Meta since 2017, has played a crucial role in driving the company's AI advancements, particularly in the development of Meta's open-source language model, Llama.
As the Vice President of AI Research, Pineau led the Fundamental AI Research group (FAIR) and oversaw various projects, including voice translation, image recognition, and Llama. Her leadership contributed significantly to Meta's efforts to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence.
Pineau's departure comes at a time when Meta is heavily investing in AI, with plans to spend between $60 billion and $65 billion on AI-related capital expenditures this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority, aiming to build an AI assistant with over 1 billion users and achieve advanced machine intelligence.
Meta has initiated a search for Pineau's replacement, but no successor has been named yet. Pineau plans to take some time to reflect before embarking on a new adventure, but her next role remains undisclosed.
