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By Katie Paul and Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) – A Meta Platforms executive overseeing the company’s efforts to develop its own chips for artificial intelligence work is leaving her position at the end of the month, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Alexis Black Bjorlin, vice president of infrastructure at Meta and a veteran of chip companies Broadcom and Intel, headed a team charged with designing a custom chip to handle a range of AI work, a key part of company’s efforts to overhaul its sprawling network of data centers for an era dominated by chatbots and image generators. She is leaving her position at the end of the month but not immediately leaving the company, one of the sources said.
Yee Jiun Song, Meta’s vice president of engineering, will take over her role, and the company will continue its efforts to develop its own AI hardware, one of the sources said.
Black Bjorlin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meta on Tuesday is expected to offer new details of its mix-reality headsets that will be a window into what it calls the “metaverse.” A key feature of that world will be virtual assistants with distinctive personalities, sources have told Reuters.
To create and power those features and others, Meta is reworking its data centers and building powerful supercomputers with chips from Nvidia.
Reuters reported earlier this year that Meta is also working on its own custom chips that would help it both control costs and better chart its own path independent of commercial chip providers. Some of the company’s initial efforts proved slower than using existing chips, leading the company to scrap some of its AI chips. Meta is working on a newer chip that will span all types of AI work.
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(Reporting by Katie Paul and Stephen Nellis; Editing by Kenneth Li and Lisa Shumaker)
