Inside Meta's scramble to catch up on AI

FILE PHOTO: A security guard stands watch by the Meta sign outside the headquarters of Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc in Mountain View, California, U.S. November 9, 2022. REUTERS/Peter DaSilva/File Photo

(Reuters) - As the summer of 2022 came to a close, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gathered his top lieutenants for a five-hour dissection of the company's computing capacity, focused on its ability to do cutting-edge artificial intelligence work, according to a company memo dated Sept. 20 reviewed by Reuters.

They had a thorny problem: despite high-profile investments in AI research, the social media giant had been slow to adopt expensive AI-friendly hardware and software systems for its main business, hobbling its ability to keep pace with innovation at scale even as it increasingly relied on AI to support its growth, according to the memo, company statements and interviews with 12 people familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal company matters.