Meta’s Instagram orders employees back to the office 5 days a week
Instagram has installed a new privacy setting which will default all new and existing underage accounts to an automatic private mode.
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Instagram will require U.S.-based employees to work five days a week in an office, Meta confirmed on Monday.
The new return-to-office policy will take effect on Feb. 2 and is intended to foster a more creative and collaborative working environment, according to a report by the Sources newsletter that cited an employee memo by Instagram chief Adam Mosseri.
The report also noted that Mosseri aims to reduce the number of meetings at the photo-sharing unit and wants employees to debut more product prototypes instead of decks, which refers to formal written memos and related documentation.
A Meta spokesperson told CNBC that the new RTO policy only applies to Instagram and not to the company’s other family of apps, like Facebook and WhatsApp.
Meta instituted a return-to-office mandate in September 2023, calling on employees across its family of apps to work at least three days a week from a physical office, similar to other policies at the time by companies like Amazon and Google-parent Alphabet.
More recently, tech companies and other firms have begun requiring employees to work five days out of the week from an office, which executives have generally characterized as a way to remove organizational layers and improve collaboration in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
In January 2025, Amazon put in place its five-day-a-week work mandate. Other companies have also made the back-to-office push, including AT&T, Boeing and Dell Technologies.
WATCH: Meta is visibly seeing a return on investment from AI.
Technology
Nvidia CEO to Cramer: Synopsys deal is ‘culmination of everything I showed you’ over the years
John Giannandrea.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Apple’s AI chief is stepping down, the company announced Monday in the most visible shake up yet to the iPhone maker’s artificial intelligence group since launching its Apple Intelligence suite in 2024.
John Giannandrea, who held the position since joining the company in 2018, will be replaced by Amar Subramanya, an AI researcher who most recently worked for Microsoft and was previously part of Google’s DeepMind AI unit, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Giannandrea was a senior vice president and reported to Apple CEO Tim Cook. He will continue to serve as an advisor until retiring next spring, Apple said.
The change comes as experts this year have said Apple has fallen behind its tech peers in artificial intelligence, a tech field that has been reinvigorated since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022.
Apple Intelligence, which was intended to put Apple alongside AI leaders like OpenAI and Google, has not been well-reviewed by users and critics. Earlier this year, one of its most critical aspects, a significantly improved Siri assistant, was delayed until 2026, signaling development challenges.
Subramanya will serve as Apple’s vice president of AI, and will report to software chief Craig Federighi, the company said.
In a statement, Cook said Federighi has already been playing a key role in Apple’s AI efforts.
“In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year,” Cook said in a statement.
Subramanya will lead teams working on Apple’s foundation models, research and AI safety. Other teams previously under Giannandrea will move under COO Sabih Khan and services chief Eddy Cue, Apple said.
Although Apple shares are up 16% in 2025, they have lagged many other big tech companies as investors say the iPhone maker has fallen behind its peers that are investing billions into AI data centers, chips and frontier models.
Apple said in August that it was “significantly increasing” the amount it spends on AI, and Cook has said it’s a “profound” technology. Apple has struck a deal with leader OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into some of its products, like Siri.
But Apple is playing a different game than companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta. It’s spending much less on infrastructure for the technology. Apple also prefers its AI to run on its devices, instead of communicating back to more powerful computers in the cloud.
Apple this year also saw Jony Ive, its legendary hardware designer who helped late co-founder Steve Jobs invent the iPhone, sell his startup io for $6.4 billion to OpenAI, with the intention of helping the AI lab release its own hardware.
Analysts say that Apple has built a loyalty moat among its customers since the iPhone launched in 2007, but AI-driven hardware is on its way, with Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last month saying that they’ve already completed their first prototypes and could reveal them in two years or less.
WATCH: Apple will gain more AI functionality over time, says D.A. Davidson’s Gil Luria
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