Meta ends 4-month partnership with Song Xiaodong's team, sources say due to 'work style mismatch'

动察 Beating AI news flash, according to Semafor, Meta is laying off a group of employees hired in June this year from the AI safety startup Virtue AI, with the collaboration lasting only about 4 months. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Semafor that the personnel were laid off due to "work style mismatch" and that the collaboration did not develop as expected. In June this year, UC Berkeley computer professor and Virtue AI founder Dawn Song announced she was joining Meta's Superintelligence Labs, along with Virtue AI co-founder Bo Li, Sanmi Koyejo, and other team members.

The hiring was reported as Meta bringing in an independent team rather than acquiring all of Virtue AI. Virtue AI mainly focuses on AI safety testing, red team attacks, vulnerability discovery, and protection and governance during model operation. Meta's earlier introduction of this team was seen as related to its push for AI Agents and superintelligence strategy, as well as strengthening AI safety and frontier risk governance. Semafor reported that Meta said Superintelligence Labs will continue to focus on AI safety, alignment, and frontier risks.

However, Meta did not disclose the specific disagreements between the two sides, and it has not yet been confirmed whether core Virtue AI members such as Dawn Song have all left Meta. Virtue AI had also not responded as of the time of the report's publication. The report believes that the rapid change in this collaboration has once again sparked discussion about the "organizational mismatch" problem when top research teams enter large companies, namely that the autonomy, flexibility, and higher decision-making efficiency that startup teams are accustomed to may conflict with the organizational processes and corporate culture of large tech companies.