Meta faces roughly 8,000 cuts
- Meta told employees it will cut about 10% of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 jobs, with the first layoffs scheduled to begin May 20. - Internal plans also call for eliminating about 6,000 open roles as Meta shifts spending toward artificial intelligence infrastructure, chips and core products. - The cuts revive Meta’s “efficiency” playbook as the company ramps AI spending after earlier restructuring waves. (about.fb.com)
Meta plans to cut about 8,000 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, with layoffs set to start May 20. (techcrunch.com) (cbsnews.com) Reports on April 23 said the cuts were outlined in an internal memo to employees. Several outlets said Meta also plans to eliminate about 6,000 open positions. (techrepublic.com) (aol.com) The company had just under 80,000 employees at the end of December 2025, putting the reduction at roughly one in 10 workers. Reuters-based reports said this is the first wave of a broader 2026 restructuring. (techrepublic.com) (usatoday.com) Meta has spent the past year telling investors and employees that artificial intelligence is becoming central to its products and internal operations. In January, the company said 2026 would intensify that push across recommendation systems, generative AI and how Meta works. (about.fb.com) That strategy also requires expensive infrastructure. In March, Meta said it was accelerating deployment of new generations of its custom Meta Training and Inference Accelerator chips to handle ranking, recommendations and generative AI workloads. (about.fb.com) Meta has paired that investment message with a leaner-headcount message before. In November 2022, Mark Zuckerberg said Meta would cut about 13% of staff, and in March 2023 he called the next phase a “Year of Efficiency.” (about.fb.com 1) (about.fb.com 2) The company has not published a matching layoff announcement on its newsroom so far, even as it has posted a string of April updates on AI chips, data centers and new products. That leaves the clearest public picture coming from memo-based reporting and follow-up coverage. (about.fb.com) (techcrunch.com) If the schedule holds, May 20 will mark Meta’s next big workforce reset — this time while the company is spending more heavily to build its AI stack. (cbsnews.com) (about.fb.com)
