Meta cuts ~700, ups exec pay
Meta announced roughly 700 job cuts across Reality Labs, recruiting and other teams as it pivots spending toward AI — and simultaneously rolled out large, growth‑linked executive stock awards tied to AI targets. The twin moves signal an aggressive push to keep top technical leaders while shrinking teams and expect interviewers to probe for high‑impact, autonomous work examples. (foxbusiness.com) (reuters.com)
Some impacted employees have been offered other roles inside Meta or the option to relocate to stay with the company, and portions of Reality Labs were told to work remotely on the day cuts were implemented. (techcrunch.com) The reductions affected fewer than 1,000 positions, a figure that represents under 1.3% of Meta’s headcount of 78,865 as of December 31, 2025. (techcrunch.com) Meta’s board and finance team guided full‑year 2026 capital expenditures of $115 billion to $135 billion and total expenses of $162 billion to $169 billion, figures management tied directly to ramping AI infrastructure for its Superintelligence Labs. (investor.atmeta.com) SEC filings show restricted stock units and newly issued stock options were granted to senior leaders including CFO Susan Li, CTO Andrew Bosworth, Chief Product Officer Christopher Cox and operating chief Javier Olivan, while the package did not include CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (cnbc.com) The option payouts are tied to steep share‑price tranches — the first strike is $1,116.08 (about an $2.82 trillion market cap) and later tranches rise to $3,727.12 (a valuation above $9 trillion) — with the initial trigger requiring roughly an 88% rise from recent levels. (cnbc.com) Reporting and analyst math on the package put potential individual payouts in the hundreds of millions of dollars for some executives, and multiple outlets calculated theoretical windfalls for top recipients as high as about $2.7 billion under the most aggressive valuation scenarios; the awards were disclosed in filings dated March 24, 2026. (money.usnews.com)
