Meta’s policy chief Joel Kaplan reportedly set for 2027 exit as leadership shifts around AI buildout

Meta is facing a leadership transition tied to its fast-growing artificial intelligence efforts, according to a report published Thursday. The report says Joel Kaplan, Meta’s policy chief, is reportedly planning to leave the company in 2027.

Kaplan’s role sits at the intersection of regulation, government relations, and corporate policy, where Meta has spent years navigating issues ranging from privacy and content enforcement to antitrust scrutiny. The report does not describe the company’s reasoning for the timing or the specific responsibilities Kaplan would step down from, beyond placing the transition alongside a broader shift in leadership.

The same report says Dina Powell McCormick, Meta’s president, would take on added responsibilities for external affairs. External affairs generally covers a mix of public policy work, communications with governments and regulators, and other stakeholder engagement that can become more complex as a company’s technology roadmap expands.

The reported leadership changes are framed as part of Meta’s continued push to expand its artificial intelligence infrastructure and related investments. While “AI infrastructure” is not detailed in the report, the phrase typically refers to the compute, data, and systems required to train and run machine-learning models, as well as the engineering effort to integrate those capabilities across products.

For Meta, that infrastructure buildout is also closely connected to policy risk and public oversight. AI systems are often subject to scrutiny around transparency, safety, and accountability, and Meta’s advertising and social platform businesses mean its models can influence content discovery and related user experiences at scale.

Meta has repeatedly emphasized AI across its product and engineering roadmaps, and leadership roles that coordinate with regulators and policymakers can take on greater importance when technical capacity and deployment grow quickly. Against that backdrop, consolidating external-facing responsibilities under McCormick would represent a management decision to centralize how the company engages outside stakeholders while it scales its AI footprint internally.

As of Thursday, Meta had not publicly confirmed the reported timeline or role changes. The company also did not, in the report, provide details on succession planning for Kaplan’s specific policy portfolio, whether any interim leadership will be put in place before 2027, or how the policy and external affairs functions would be reorganized internally.

What to watch next is whether Meta issues a formal statement or updates its leadership disclosures on the company’s website and in investor materials. The clearest indicator would be any announced changes to the roles and responsibilities of Kaplan and McCormick, as well as any additional appointments that announcement how Meta intends to align its policy strategy with its AI infrastructure spending plans.