Meta reorganized its recommendations division last fall to form MRS Research, an elite AI research unit focused on advancing the algorithms that power Facebook and Instagram's home feeds, led by Yang Song, a former TikTok executive who joined in November 2025 to “revolutionize” Meta's recommendation systems. The unit has been aggressively recruiting top talent, adding former Amazon AI researcher Lihong Li, former OpenAI researcher Xiaolong Wang, and former Google researcher Fei Sha, as Meta looks to use cutting-edge AI research to superpower its core advertising business. MRS Research is separate from Meta Superintelligence Labs, the frontier AI division led by Alexandr Wang that Meta announced last summer, signaling that the company is building elite research capabilities across multiple fronts simultaneously.
Meta Quietly Built an Elite AI Research Lab to Supercharge Its Recommendation Algorithms on Facebook and Instagram
Paul Drecksler is the founder and editor of Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter, covering the most important stories in e-commerce.
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