Meta‘s head of artificial intelligence research, Joelle Pineau, has announced her departure from the company effective May 30. 

Pineau, who serves as Vice President of AI Research and leads Meta’s Fundamental AI Research unit (FAIR), shared the news via LinkedIn on Tuesday, April 1.

As CNBC reports, the departure comes at a strategic inflection point for Meta, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg positions AI as the company’s top priority. Meta currently invests billions in an effort to establish market leadership ahead of competitors, including OpenAI and Google.

Open-Source Contributions and Research Legacy

Since joining Meta in 2017 to lead its Montreal AI research lab, Pineau has overseen numerous high-profile AI initiatives. Under her leadership, FAIR developed projects, including the open-source Llama family of AI models and PyTorch software for AI developers.

“Through the years, we created and nurtured dozens of projects that are now household names at Meta, used by dozens of teams to build better products: PyTorch, FAISS, Roberta, Dino, Llama, SAM, Codegen, Audiobox,” Pineau wrote in her announcement.

Timing Coincides with Product Launches

Pineau’s exit announcement precedes Meta’s upcoming LlamaCon AI conference on April 29, where the company is expected to unveil Llama 4. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox indicated in March that this latest version would help power AI agents, a growing focus in generative AI development. The company also plans to announce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot.

Leadership Transition as Meta Pursues AGI

Zuckerberg has publicly stated his goal for Meta to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)—systems capable of human-comparable thinking and action.

“As the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” Pineau states in her LinkedIn post.