Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has quietly dismantled Alexandr Wang’s power nine months after the $14 billion hire. The 28-year-old data labeling entrepreneur now oversees AI models being built on infrastructure he doesn’t control. A new applied AI engineering organization under Andrew Bosworth routes talent and data pipelines around Wang entirely. Researchers report to other executives. Wang keeps his title but loses every lever that matters—a calculated pivot that suggests Zuckerberg’s bet has already failed. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has quietly begun dismantling the power structure he built around Alexandr Wang, his $14 billion bet to lead the company’s AI push—evidence that the billionaire entrepreneur is losing faith in the 28-year-old data labeling entrepreneur he once courted with homemade soup deliveries and hundreds-of-millions-dollar compensation packages. Nine months after Wang arrived to oversee Meta Superintelligence Labs with absolute control over the company’s frontier AI models, Zuckerberg is now routing engineering talent, data pipelines, and model evaluations around him entirely. The Avocado and Mango models Wang promised will be built on infrastructure he doesn’t control. The researchers he hired report to other executives. It suggests Zuckerberg is building organizational redundancy—distributing responsibility across multiple leaders as Meta’s AI ambitions scale.The shift crystallized Tuesday when Meta announced a new applied AI engineering organization led by Maher Saba, a long-time Reality Labs executive now reporting directly to Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth. The structure itself tells the story: Zuckerberg is bypassing Wang’s Superintelligence Labs to build a parallel engineering powerhouse designed to feed his core AI models data, tooling, and evaluations faster than Wang’s team can consume them.
The parallel org charts reveal the real power play
When Zuckerberg hired Wang in June to oversee Meta Superintelligence Labs, the structure looked clean: Wang would own the entire AI research and development stack. Today, that model is fragmenting. Saba’s new team will have a deliberately flat structure—up to 50 individual contributors for every manager—designed to move faster than traditional bureaucracy allows. It’s the opposite of the centralized, ego-driven approach Wang brought to the table.The Wall Street Journal reported the internal memo outlining Saba’s mandate: build “the data engine that helps our models get better, faster.” That language matters. Zuckerberg isn’t just creating another team. He’s creating an engine designed to make Wang’s job harder if he doesn’t perform, and easier to replace him if he does.This comes nine months after Zuckerberg began questioning whether hiring Wang was a mistake. According to reporting from the Financial Times and New York Times, Wang quickly clashed with longtime Meta lieutenants Chris Cox and Andrew Bosworth. Wang wanted to focus purely on catching up to OpenAI and Google’s models. Cox and Bosworth wanted to use Instagram and Facebook data to build products people would actually use. Wang complained to associates that Zuckerberg’s oversight felt suffocating. Meanwhile, Yann LeCun—Meta’s chief AI scientist and Wang’s theoretical superior—walked out in November rather than report to him.
The highest-paid executive now has isolation instead of influence
When Zuckerberg first tapped Wang, he reportedly offered compensation packages worth hundreds of millions to top researchers. Wang was positioned as the genius billionaire who would crack superintelligence. Instead, he’s become sidelined. The TBD Lab sits in a glass box next to Zuckerberg’s office. Only two of roughly 100 researchers left when their equity vested in November—a sign the team has limited mobility.Now, with Saba’s new organization reporting to Bosworth instead of Wang, engineering talent flows around Wang rather than through him. The Avocado and Mango models will be trained on data pipes Saba controls. The tooling and feedback loops that turn capable models into leading ones will operate one level below Wang’s direct authority.Zuckerberg has always built redundancy into his biggest bets. With Wang overseeing research while Saba handles data infrastructure and Bosworth manages overall execution, the company distributes risk across multiple leaders.