Meta’s top AI researcher, Joelle Pineau, recently announced that she is leaving. She has not given any reasons for her departure and has not made any announcements about her next move.
Pineau’s announced departure on June 1 of this year comes at a difficult time for Meta. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company needs to invest more in AI to compete with rivals such as OpenAI and Google and ultimately become the market leader.
In particular, Meta must develop its own AI assistant that will be used by at least one billion end users. Unlike OpenAI with ChatGPT and Google with Gemini, Meta has a much less used AI assistant, the Meta AI chatbot.
Pineau’s explanation
On LinkedIn, Pineau classically states that Meta is ready to build on its accumulated expertise in AI. After eight years, it is therefore time for someone else to take over and start this new chapter.
It is unknown whether there are other motives for her imminent departure from Meta. Pineau has also not indicated what exactly she will do after Meta. For now, she plans to take it easy for a while.
Canadian Joelle Pineau has been the head of Meta’s AI research team, or FAIR, since 2023. Prior to this, she led fundamental AI research into AI technology that was later applied in Meta’s core apps. For example, she played a major role in the development of Llama and PyTorch.
Meta’s response
In a response, Meta thanks Joelle Pineau for her open-source contributions and for the way in which she has helped develop groundbreaking Meta products and the science behind these products.
At the end of this month, Meta will probably announce the latest version of its Llamas LLM’s: Llama 4. This LLM is also expected to support agentic AI. In addition, Meta is expected to announce a stand-alone app for its Meta AI chatbot.
Also read: Meta unveils powerful open-source model Llama 3 and chatbot Meta AI