Meta built its Applied AI team in March, staffing it with roughly 6,500 engineers tasked with supporting the company's Superintelligence Labs ambitions. Three months later, according to Wired and TechCrunch, the unit is seething.
Sources describe assignments as menial and "soul-crushing," with both executives and rank-and-file employees struggling to make sense of what Wired calls Meta's "chaotic AI strategy." TechCrunch reports the unit is "on the verge of revolt" — a striking phrase for a team that was supposed to be a cornerstone of Zuckerberg's AI push.
The frustration doesn't stop at day-to-day work. When Mark Zuckerberg floated the idea of a companywide AI hackathon, it landed badly. According to Wired, one employee posted in a company-wide forum: "I'm not sure that this company supports a hackathon culture anymore." The comment captures a broader sense that the creative, high-stakes energy employees expected simply isn't materializing.
Meta has been publicly aggressive about AI — poaching top researchers, announcing large model investments, and restructuring teams at speed. But internal accounts suggest the rollout has been disorganized, leaving thousands of skilled engineers doing work far below their expectations.
It matters because Meta is spending billions to compete with OpenAI and Google in the AI race, and a demoralized engineering workforce is a real liability — talent that feels underused doesn't stay.