Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Philanthropy Shuffles Staff Amid A.I. Pivot

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the philanthropic organization founded by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, last year announced plans to reposition itself as a science-first organization. Now, the group is cutting dozens of roles while hiring for new ones as it moves toward that direction.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based philanthropy is eliminating approximately 70 roles, or roughly 8 percent of its staff, a CZI spokesperson confirmed to Observer. The cuts come as CZI reviews its team amid an internal reshaping focused on frontier biology and A.I., a marked departure from its prior emphasis on social advocacy.

In some cases, staffers are being reassigned to new roles. Those who have been laid off, meanwhile, will receive a 60-day notice period along with severance packages that include 16 weeks of base pay and health insurance, a $10,000 stipend, their 2025 performance bonus and a portion of their 2026 performance bonus.

The last time CZI enacted a round of headcount cuts was in 2023, when the organization laid off 48 employees from its education team. Education, alongside areas like criminal justice and community development, started off as key missions for the organization, which was launched by Zuckerberg and Chan in 2015 and has since doled out more than $7 billion in grants.

But in recent months, CZI has increasingly pivoted away from its initial social mission and toward scientific research. That shift came to a head in November, when CZI unveiled plans to primarily funnel its efforts and resources into Biohub, a network of research centers focused on A.I.-powered biology. To achieve its goal of curing, preventing and managing diseases with the aid of new technologies, CZI will expand its compute capacity and build out its team with relevant talent.

On that note, CZI last year acquired the team from EvolutionaryScale, an A.I. research lab specializing in life sciences. The organization is still looking to bring on new hires with skill sets aligning to its new direction—its Biohub network currently has 19 open roles ranging from computational biologists and data scientists to postdoctoral fellows specializing in mass spectrometry, humanized mouse models and single-cell method development.

CZI’s redesign has been in the making for some time. The organization, which began its transition to a science-focused philanthropy in 2024, hinted at an internal overhaul last year when it scaled back DEI programs, shut down a CZI-funded low-income school in East Palo Alto and cut ties with various housing organizations in California.

What’s next for CZI?

There is a massive amount of money at stake in the philanthropic undertakings of Zuckerberg and Chan. Upon launching CZI more than a decade ago, the couple pledged to donate 99 percent of their Meta shares—valued at $45 billion at the time—to charity. Today, Zuckerberg is the world’s fifth richest person with an estimated net worth of $243 billion.

Instead of social advocacy causes, the bulk of these funds are now earmarked for A.I.-driven biomedical research. “When we started, our goal was to help scientists cure or prevent all diseases this century,” said Zuckerberg and Chan in a joint letter last November. “With advances in A.I., we now believe this may be possible much sooner.”

While CZI will continue to support some of its other philanthropic efforts, Biohub will receive the majority of resources going forward. “There will be many challenges, but we believe that achieving some of humanity’s long-term dreams will also come within reach,” the couple said.