Mark Zuckerberg 'Sidelining' Meta's Highest-Paid Executive: Report

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to be reducing the influence of his company's highest-paid employee and an important AI executive as part of an extensive internal reorganisation, reports indicate.

Alexandr Wang, the founder and former CEO of the AI startup Scale AI, was once considered essential to the social media giant's ambitious AI plan. The 28-year-old became the leader of Meta Superintelligence Labs after a multibillion-dollar investment in his firm in mid-2025.

As a result, Wang reportedly received one of the highest salary packages in corporate history, making him Meta's highest-paid employee.

Nine months after Wang's arrival at Meta Superintelligence Labs, Zuckerberg has been encouraging internal reorganisation in the engineering structure. These include engineering teams, data pipelines, and oversight of projects like the highly envisioned "Avocado" and "Mango" models, which were once under Wang's direct control. As a result, researchers under Wang's supervision now report to other executives.

Meta is reportedly creating a new applied AI engineering organisation to support its superintelligence initiatives. The new organisation will be led by Maher Saba, a vice president at Reality Labs, the division responsible for Meta's metaverse products and AI-powered smart glasses, according to Business Insider.

According to The New York Times, Wang found himself at odds with long-time Meta lieutenants Andrew Bosworth and Chris Cox. Wang intended to concentrate only on catching up to Google's and OpenAI's models. However, Cox and Bosworth aimed to create products that people would genuinely use by leveraging data from Facebook and Instagram.

In November 2025, Wang's theoretical leader and head AI scientist of Meta, Yann LeCun, quit instead of reporting to him. Thus, the highest-paid executive now faces isolation instead of influence.

Furthermore, Wang complained that Zuckerberg's management felt suffocating. Wang reportedly told colleagues that Zuckerberg's "tight grip" on the company's AI initiatives is limiting creativity and impeding the team's ability to advance swiftly. There is reportedly a lot of conflict within Meta's AI group due to the perceived micromanagement.

Wang joined Zuckerberg in June 2025 as part of a $14.3 billion acquisition of a 49% share in Scale AI. Wang was chosen to head the Meta Superintelligence Labs, a branch designed to bring together all of Meta's AI product development and research.

The new organisation, led by Saba, will now consist of two separate teams: one will be responsible for developing internal tools and interfaces, while the other will be tasked with providing data to the AI.

In an internal memo, Saba stated that the unit will collaborate closely with Meta's Superintelligence Lab to develop "the data engine that helps our models get better, faster."