Meta silicon strategy is turbulent, poaching Microsoft executives to lead the chip business

CTOnews.com, April 26 (Xinhua) according to Theinformation, two people familiar with the matter revealed that Meta platform recently hired a chip executive from Microsoft to be responsible for developing custom chips for hardware devices.

The executive, Jean Boufarhat, who is currently Microsoft's vice president of silicon engineering, will join Meta's Facebook "CTOnews.com Facebook Agile Silicon Team" (FAST) to succeed Ofer Shacham. Shacham moved to Israel from California about a year ago, but continues to lead the team. He was recently told that he would be replaced, and it is not clear whether he will stay at the company.

The reshuffle comes as Meta platform is reviewing its silicon strategy, which could mean more layoffs. The company had planned to develop its own chips for products such as virtual reality headsets and smart glasses, but the plan ran into difficulties because of high costs, slow progress and fierce competition in the market. In November, the company announced that it had laid off about 200 employees on its FAST team and outsourced some of its chip projects to partners such as Intel.