Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

The company announced the cuts in a memo from its Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit and other product-related positions will be impacted.

Axios was first to report the cuts.

Meta has been aggressively investing in AI as it works to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google, pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and recruitment.

On Tuesday, the company announced a $27 billion deal with Blue Owl Capital to fund and develop its massive Hyperion data center in rural Louisiana. The data center is expected to be large enough to cover a “significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post in July.

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