Meta AI transformation leader Emily Dalton Smith is leaving company

Meta’s executive overseeing a central piece of its AI overhaul is leaving, a move that exposes how much execution risk still surrounds the company’s push to turn generative AI into a workplace system, not just a consumer feature. Emily Dalton Smith had been leading product work tied to Meta’s effort to improve internal AI tooling and reshape the company around AI across both user-facing products and back-office operations.

Smith had been with Meta since 2015 and previously held senior product roles, including vice president of product management and head of product for Threads. Her departure comes about two months after Meta told employees she would lead the product side of the company’s internal AI transformation, underscoring how quickly leadership around the effort is still shifting.

The restructuring she was helping guide has aimed to build AI agents that can handle tasks now done by human staffers. Her team was focused on interfaces, platform components, memory systems, automations and shared product experiences, with responsibility for Metamate, Meta’s main internal enterprise AI assistant. Meta also planned to fold more of its internal-use AI tools into Metamate and add capabilities drawn from systems that navigate work files, coordinate coding from chats and retain persistent memory, along with polished dashboards and microsites from Manus, the Singapore-based AI agent startup Meta acquired for around $2 billion in December.

The broader reorganization has already been disruptive. Meta laid off 10% of its workforce and transferred nearly as many employees into new units, while employees openly criticized the AI push in meetings and on internal message boards. That backlash matters because the company is trying to present AI as a productivity engine that will improve engagement, ad performance and product development, not just a research priority.

Meta has said AI will transform how the company works in 2026, and it has elevated that effort with Alexandr Wang, who joined in June 2025 as the company’s first-ever chief AI officer and now leads Meta Superintelligence Labs. Smith’s exit leaves Meta with a sharper question: whether “AI for Work” is becoming a durable operating strategy or remains an unsettled internal reorganization still searching for stable leadership.