Mark Zuckerberg has appointed his long-time lieutenant, Vishal Shah, to a key product management role within Meta’s artificial intelligence team. This latest executive shake-up signals a dramatic acceleration of the billionaire’s frantic AI push. Shah, who joined Meta a decade ago, previously served as the head of product at Instagram before moving in 2021 to lead the company's efforts to create the metaverse.
The reshuffle arrives in the immediate aftermath of a disappointing product launch: Meta’s AI video service, Vibes, was quickly overshadowed by OpenAI’s rival Sora app.
In a memo announcing Shah’s appointment, Meta's head of AI product, Nat Friedman, outlined a shift in strategy, confirming that the company could no longer merely be an AI team, but needed to become an AI company. This organisational turbulence comes at a critical moment for the $1.9tn company. Just last week, Meta laid off around 600 staff from its AI division, only months after an aggressive hiring blitz. Zuckerberg is reportedly racing to beat both OpenAI and Google in developing models that are not only smarter than humans but also personalised for users across Facebook, Instagram, and other apps. Friedman oversaw the launch of Vibes, which was reportedly rushed out to pre-empt Sora’s release. To speed up the development, Friedman brokered a multibillion-dollar deal with the AI start-up Midjourney to integrate its image generation technology into the Meta AI app, despite the app originally being designed for Meta’s own video model. While Vibes did boost user numbers, the wave of excitement around Sora, which appeared days later, swiftly overshadowed it.