# Meta’s head of product for AI for work leaves after just two months in the role > Source: > Published: 2026-06-18 06:29:46+00:00 # Meta’s head of product for AI for work leaves after just two months in the role Emily Dalton Smith's departure adds to growing leadership turbulence at Meta as the company pivots aggressively toward AI dominance Emily Dalton Smith, who was tapped to lead Meta’s “AI for Work” initiative in April 2026, has already left the company. Her departure, effective June 17, makes her tenure in the role roughly two months long. Dalton Smith wasn’t a newcomer parachuting into unfamiliar territory. She joined Meta back in 2015, previously serving as head of product for Threads. ## A pivot wrapped in a restructuring wrapped in layoffs Meta has been in the middle of substantial company-wide restructuring, involving significant workforce reductions and organizational reshuffling. The company has been reallocating resources away from its once-celebrated metaverse ambitions and toward AI integration across both user-facing products and internal operations. Dalton Smith’s portfolio included overseeing the development and consolidation of AI tools like Metamate, Meta’s internal enterprise AI assistant. Losing the person in charge of that effort, especially this early, creates a vacuum in a strategically critical area. No successor has been named. No details about future leadership for the AI for Work initiative have surfaced. ## Meta’s AI ambitions in context The shift away from the metaverse, once the company’s defining bet, has been one of the more dramatic strategic reversals in recent tech history. AI is now the centerpiece, and initiatives like AI for Work were supposed to be proof points that Meta could apply the technology internally before selling it externally. Enterprise AI is one of the most competitive spaces in tech right now. Companies from Microsoft to Google to a growing roster of startups are racing to embed AI assistants into workplace workflows. Microsoft has been embedding Copilot across its entire enterprise suite. Google is pushing Gemini into Workspace. **Disclosure:** This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our [Editorial Policy](https://cryptobriefing.com/editorial-policy/).