Meta Platforms is cutting about 600 jobs from the company’s artificial intelligence unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs, as it aims to move more quickly in the competitive AI race.

Employees impacted by the cuts were alerted on Wednesday, according to an internal memo, though the company’s newly formed TBD Lab group, which includes many of the highly-paid recent hires, was not affected.

“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” wrote Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, in a memo to coworkers.

Meta is encouraging impacted employees to apply to jobs elsewhere within the company, and will keep hiring for its AI teams moving forward, according to a person familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details were not public. Axios reported earlier on the job cuts.

The downsizing is the latest move in the heated AI race by Meta and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who’s spending aggressively to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google. Meta has spent billions acquiring top talent from around the industry, including a $14.3 billion investment in data labeling startup Scale AI, which led to Wang joining Meta and leading its AI efforts. --Bloomberg