Mark Zuckerberg just posted a totally normal and fine photo with Alexandr Wang

• Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo to Threads with the Scale AI founder after rumors of tension.
• Meta has created a new AI engineering team, separate from Wang's AI team at the company.
• Meta denies that Zuckerberg is "done with" Wang.

Folks, it's just a totally normal day over at Meta HQ. Nothing to see here, no unsubstantiated rumors of a feud, no billion-dollar breakup. Just two totally happy, smiling colleagues.

See? Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, just posted this photo of himself linking arms with Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI and now head of AI Superintelligence at Meta. Just two happy dudes!

You, a normal person who happened to stumble across this photo while browsing Threads — where it's been widely circulated — might be confused. What's the deal with this photo?

Here's the backstory:

Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta reorganized its AI structure, creating a new group of applied AI engineers. Meta had brought in Alexandr Wang as chief AI officer last summer, after investing more than $14 billion for a 49% stake in Wang's data-labeling company, Scale AI. This brand new applied AI team, however, is separate from Wang's team, and reports up to CTO Andrew Bosworth, the Journal reported.

Here's where things get weird. Last week, the Times of India ran a headline saying "Mark Zuckerberg may be 'done with' Meta's highest-paid employee as company's reorganization shows." That story went mildly viral on Reddit and was aggregated by IDN Financials. Meta's spokesperson, Andy Stone, disputed the story on X, and as of Tuesday, the headline has been changed.

So is Zuckerberg's photo designed to help quash rumors of tension between the two men? That Wang isn't being pushed out, and they're working together as normal?

While the whole blowup around the Times of India story was a big deal on X, where lots of people are interested in discussing news about the AI industry, Zuckerberg chose to post the photo to Threads, where chatter on AI office politics is much more muted.

Of course, Mark Zuckerberg has a lot of followers on Threads, but it seems most of them had no idea about what was going on. One of the top comments I saw was someone posting the "context?" guy meme, then more replies mistook Wang for Roy Lee of Cluely (oof), and someone replied asking Grok who was in the photo (oops).

And so here you have photographic evidence of two happy, normal guys — and now you know the backstory if you didn't already. Now move along, nothing to see here!