Meta’s Head of Artificial Intelligence Research, Joelle Pineau, announced on Tuesday that she will be leaving the company.

Pineau’s announcement comes just weeks before Meta’s LlamaCon AI conference on April 29, where the company is set to unveil the latest version of Llama.

Pineau departs Meta as AI race intensifies under Zuckerberg’s vision

In a LinkedIn post, Pineau, who serves as Meta’s Vice President of AI Research, revealed that her last day at the company will be May 30.

Her departure comes at a crucial moment for Meta, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority, committing billions of dollars to position the company as a leader in the field, ahead of competitors like OpenAI and Google.

According to Zuckerberg, his goal for Meta is to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and artificial general intelligence, which is a term used to describe computers that can think and take actions comparable to humans.

“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 wrote. 

She noted that she would be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that the firm has all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world and responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people.

Pineau was one of Meta’s leading AI researchers, having headed the company’s fundamental AI research division, FAIR, since 2023. In this role, she guided the company’s advanced computer science research, much of which has been integrated into its core applications.

Pineau reflects on legacy at Meta ahead of key AI milestones and LlamaCon event

Pineau began her tenure at Meta in 2017 to lead Meta’s Montreal AI research lab.  In addition to her role at Meta, she is a computer science professor at McGill University, where she is a co-director of its reasoning and learning lab.

She helped oversee some of the projects, including Meta’s open-source Llama family of AI models and other technologies, such as the PyTorch software for AI developers.

Her departure announcement comes a few weeks ahead of Meta’s LlamaCon AI conference at the end of this month. 

In this event, Meta is expected to provide details on its latest version of Llama. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, to whom Pineau reported had earlier, noted that Llama 4 will help power AI agents, the latest craze in generative AI. The firm is also expected to announce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot.

A Meta spokesperson expressed gratitude for Joelle Pineau’s leadership of FAIR and acknowledged her significant contributions as an important advocate for Open Source. They highlighted her role in driving breakthroughs that have advanced both the company’s products and the science behind them.

Pineau has not revealed her next role but said she “will be taking some time to observe and to reflect before jumping into a new adventure.”

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