Meta hires AI chip team, moves to divest Kustomer
Derick Hudson
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is making more AI moves, reportedly hiring a Norwegian team that had been working on building artificial intelligence networking tech.
The company confirmed hiring 10 people whose resumes included work as recently as January at British chip unicorn Graphcore, Reuters reported.
"We recently welcomed a number of highly-specialized engineers in Oslo to our infrastructure team at Meta. They bring deep expertise in the design and development of supercomputing systems to support AI and machine learning at scale in Meta's data centers," a spokesperson told the news service.
Graphcore had been seen as a promising potential challenger to Nvidia in the race for AI chip systems. The company shut down its Oslo office as part of a broader restructuring announced in October.
Meanwhile, Meta is following through on a plan to divest itself of business-software provider Kustomer.
It has a deal to trade its ownership for a passive minority stake, with no guaranteed payment in return, The Wall Street Journal
reported. A transaction set to close May 15 would give Redpoint Ventures, Battery Ventures and Boldstart Ventures stakes in the newly independent Kustomer, in exchange for funding continued operations with a combined $60M in capital, according to the report.
Meta would remain the single largest stakeholder in Kustomer, valued at $250M, but won't have a seat on the board, the WSJ said.
More on Meta and AI

Meta Platforms AI push to gain from its 'most-valuable' asset
Meta Platforms building 'top-level' product group focused on AI, Zuckerberg says
Meta unveils new machine learning language model in ongoing AI investment
Nvidia, Meta Platforms boost ongoing AI enthusiasm
Meta earnings call: Never mind the ad beat, here's the AI future (and present)