Computer scientist Erik Meijer has left Meta, as has the senior director of generative AI.

Meijer spent the last eight years as the senior director of engineering at the social media company, and was previously a software architect for Microsoft where he headed the cloud programmability team.

"There were no layoffs or anything thrilling involved," Meijer said on LinkedIn. "In fact, I am more bullish than ever about Meta with the company’s increased focus on AI."

He added: "But given the incredible competitive pressure in the field, there is really no advantage to be inside a large corp if you want to build cool stuff on top of LLMs. My current plan is to keep an empty calendar and mess around doing independent research and see where it leads."

A respected computer scientist, Meijer is known for his contributions to functional programming and his work on Meta's Hack language.

Meta has deployed an enormous compute footprint as it develops generative AI tools. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January that the company expected to operate "600,000 H100 GPU equivalents of compute" by year-end, which "may be larger than any other individual company."

Replying to a comment about the lack of access to GPU farms outside of Meta, Meijer said "I’m building on top. Let the folks with billions in funding and lots of GPUs compete for market share and ride that wave."

His departure coincides with two other AI researchers leaving Meta. FAIR research scientist Abhishek Das said that he left on Tuesday, as did Devi Parikh.

Parikh was the senior director of generative AI, and spent nearly eight years at Meta. "I am sad, nervous, and excited," Parikh said on LinkedIn.

"Sad because I'll miss Meta! I've felt tremendously valued my entire time at Meta (first in FAIR and recently in GenAI). I'll miss the people and being in the thick of things.

"Nervous because who in their right mind walks away from the job I had in times like these (leading research efforts in generative media and multimodal LLMs)?!"

She added: "And excited for new experiences :) Stay tuned for when I have more to share!"