Meta’s AI Research Chief, Joelle Pineau, to Leave After Nearly Eight Years

Joelle Pineau, Meta’s vice president of AI Research, has announced she will be leaving the company at the end of May, closing a chapter in her career after nearly eight years. 

In a Facebook post, Joelle Pineau reflected on her time at Meta, describing it as “the professional experience of a lifetime” and being grateful for the teams she worked with.

Her departure comes at a sensitive moment for Meta, which is aggressively expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts. The company has committed $65 billion to AI infrastructure in 2025, with plans for a massive data centre and the development of Llama 4, its next-generation AI model. 

Since joining Meta in 2017, Pineau has highly impacted the company’s AI research sector. She was important in developing some of the company’s most widely used AI tools, including PyTorch, FAISS, RoBERTa, DINO, Llama, SAM, and Codegen. 

These projects have both powered Meta’s AI vision and also had a huge impact on the research community.

Meta’s AI research unit, known as Fundamental AI Research (FAIR), has undergone structural changes in recent years. In an outstanding shift, the division was placed under the oversight of Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, a strategic alignment of AI research with the company’s commercial products.

In Pineau’s post, she addressed her colleagues and mentors, “I have nothing but admiration and deep gratitude for each of my managers during my time at Meta—Michael Schroepfer, Jerome Pesenti, Michael Abrash, Chris Cox. Each of them generously took me under their wing, provided context, advice, support, cover, feedback, sponsorship—and an inspiring model of leadership, each in their own way.”

While Meta searches for a successor, Pineau has noted that she will be taking a break before pursuing her next endeavour. “My last day will be May 30. After that, I will be taking some time to observe and to reflect before jumping into a new adventure,” she stated.

Meta’s drive in AI research will now continue without one of its key architects.

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