Meta’s AI research chief Joelle Pineau resigns amid ‘panic’ over open-source AI rivals and company’s push for AGI

Just two months after an anonymous Meta employee warned on the professional forum Blind that the “Meta GenAI Org [is] in Panic Mode” over the rise of open-source competitors like DeepSeek, the company is now losing one of its top AI leaders.

Joelle Pineau, Meta’s vice president of AI research, announced Tuesday she’s stepping down. In a LinkedIn post, she said her last day at the company will be May 30.

“After nearly 8 years at Meta, time has come to say farewell. Or as we say in Montréal, l’heure est venue d’accrocher mes patins. This has been the professional experience of a lifetime!” Pineau wrote on LinkedIn.

“My last day will be May 30. After that I will be taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure,” she added.

Her departure adds pressure at a time when Meta is pouring billions into artificial intelligence, hoping to catch up—or pull ahead—of players like OpenAI and Google. Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that AI is the company’s top priority, with goals that go far beyond just chatbots. He wants Meta to create an AI assistant used by over a billion people and eventually build artificial general intelligence—machines that can think and act like 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. “I will be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that you have all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world, and to responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people.”

Pineau joined Meta in 2017 to lead its Montreal AI research lab and went on to head FAIR (Fundamental AI Research) in 2023. Her work touched many of the company’s most influential projects—from PyTorch, which has become a go-to tool for AI developers, to the Llama series of open-source language models.

Her exit comes just weeks before Meta’s LlamaCon event on April 29, where the company is expected to unveil the latest version of Llama and possibly introduce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot. Meta has been positioning Llama 4 as the backbone for its next-generation AI agents.

Chris Cox, Meta’s Chief Product Officer, said in March that Llama 4 would play a big role in powering those agents, which are Meta’s answer to the growing trend in generative AI tools, CNBC reported.

“We thank Joelle for her leadership of FAIR,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “She’s been an important voice for Open Source and helped push breakthroughs to advance our products and the science behind them.”

Pineau didn’t say what’s next, only that she plans to take some time to “observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure.”

Her decision to leave arrives during a critical stretch for Meta’s AI strategy. The company is betting big on open-source models like Llama to attract developers and build trust, but it’s facing increased competition from leaner, faster-moving players. Just recently, DeepSeek—a smaller open-source model—gained attention for outperforming much larger systems at a fraction of the cost.

Whether Pineau’s departure is a blip or a bigger signal of internal strain remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Meta’s AI efforts are at a crossroads, and the pressure is only getting louder.