Being the highest-paid employee sounds great until you realize the boss is watching your every move. That's apparently the situation for Alexandr Wang, the AI entrepreneur who joined Meta Platforms Inc. (META) earlier this year when the tech giant acquired a 49% stake in his company, Scale AI, for over $14 billion.
According to The Financial Times, Wang has been telling colleagues that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's tight grip on the AI project is actually slowing things down rather than speeding them up. The irony of micromanagement making things worse isn't lost here.
Trouble in AI Paradise
This revelation comes at a particularly messy moment for Meta. The company is dealing with layoffs, high-profile executive exits, and product launches that arguably happened too soon. The much-hyped Llama 4 AI model didn't exactly set the world on fire, adding fuel to internal frustrations.
Wang currently runs the mysteriously named TBD Lab, where he's tasked with building a new flagship AI model with the decidedly friendlier codename "Avocado." But here's the catch: some people inside Meta aren't convinced Wang has the chops to manage massive research teams. His background is in AI data services, not developing cutting-edge AI models from scratch.
Pressure All Around
Wang isn't the only one feeling the heat. Nat Friedman, the former GitHub CEO brought in to integrate AI models into Meta's products, is reportedly under intense pressure to deliver. That urgency has led to products being pushed out the door before they're fully baked.
The broader picture isn't pretty either. Meta has cut 600 employees from its AI divisions and watched several senior executives head for the exits. Meanwhile, the company is planning to spend at least $70 billion on AI infrastructure this year. That's a lot of money riding on projects led by people who reportedly feel suffocated by the management style.
Meta has pushed back on parts of the report, saying that public AI benchmarks can be misleading and that recent policy controversies were based on examples that didn't actually align with company guidelines.
The stakes here are pretty clear: Meta is betting enormous amounts of money on AI dominance, but internal friction and leadership challenges could derail those ambitions. When your star AI acquisition is reportedly unhappy and your flagship model disappoints, that's not exactly the innovation story you want to be telling investors.
