Facebook parent MetaThe company has laid off some top AI scientists as it continues to pivot towards artificial intelligence. the metaverse.

People familiar with the subject and LinkedIn analysis claim that at least four members of Meta AI are gone. They have published many academic papers in top journals. Additionally, they made numerous breakthroughs that Meta can use to boost Instagram and Facebook.

Karl Hermann was an AI entrepreneur, who worked at DeepMind. On Monday, he said the real figure might be closer to half a dozen. Furthermore, he added that London’s AI laboratory had witnessed an alarmingly high number exits. The London Meta office collapsed, and most of the Meta employees were lost. [top]Researchers in the space of six weeks,” said he.

CNBC interviewed Neil Lawrence from the University of Cambridge as a professor of machine learning. “Mark’s [Zuckerberg]He said that they had gone Meta and hadn’t properly invested in London at all.”

Edward Grefenstette (a researcher scientist who led Meta’s effort on an AI branch known as reinforcement learning), has resigned from the company. He departed in February. CNBC reached out to him for comment but he declined.

Heinrich Kuttler, One of Meta AI’s research engineers managers. left in recent weeks to join Inflection AIDeepMind founder Mustafa Suleyman, and LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman founded a startup called. After spending more than two years with DeepMind, Kuttler moved to Meta in January 2019.

Ahmad Beirami, a Meta research scientist who resigned in January to join Google as a researcher, is another recent departure.

After five years of service at Meta, Douwe Kiela resigned his position as a research scientist in December. He is now the Head of Research at AI Start-Up Hugging Face.

CNBC did not receive a response from Kiela, Beirami or Kuttler to our request for comment.

CNBC has learned that several other Meta AI employees have left, or will leave, in the next weeks. A person with knowledge of the situation told CNBC. The source requested anonymity due to sensitive information. According to them, there was no single reason people would leave.

Source said that some people move to larger labs because it is more likely to advance their careers or improve research.

Source added that “Others leave because the competition or potential to hire their staff is higher elsewhere.” Others want to be part of a startup or a smaller business. Some people believe it is tied to the Meta stock market crash, although I doubt that this is necessarily the primary reason.

Meta’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, who co-founded the firm’s AI lab in 2013 after a dinner at Zuckerberg’s house, told CNBC via email that “people have changing interest[s]”Keep moving.”

He said, “Ed.” [Grefenstette]He is joining an unknown start-up. He has gone. It is a terrible loss. It is understandable that interests change. Heinrich has different plans, which I don’t know about. My knowledge does not indicate an underlying cause. FAIR (Facebook AI Research), London has not detected any migration.

It’s important to note that Meta was also populated by people from DeepMind, and other AI labs in the recent years.

U.S. tech companies have invested heavily over the past few years in this area, believing that AI will change the world. Most of their money goes to hiring the best talent at top colleges such as Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, NYU, and MIT in the U.S.

Meta AI has seen several major exits in the two-years that have followed. Rob Fergus is the cofounder of Meta AI’s AI laboratory. left MetaJoin DeepMind in 2020 and start a DeepMind New York Team.

Marc’Aurelio Ranzato joined DeepMind after he left Meta AI’s research scientist management role and joined the team as a researcher.

Meta’s AI laboratory was not the only one. There are many others. other major exitsIn 2021, the entire company will be covered.