Meta: employee data, cuts, chips
- Meta told employees it will cut 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 jobs, starting May 20 while canceling hiring for 6,000 open roles. - Days earlier, Reuters reported Meta began installing Model Capability Initiative software to log U.S. employees’ clicks, keystrokes, and screen snapshots for AI training. - Amazon said Meta also signed a multiyear AWS Graviton deal starting with tens of millions of CPU cores, tying labor cuts to a broader AI buildout. (aboutamazon.com)
Meta is cutting about 8,000 jobs while expanding the systems it uses to build and run artificial intelligence inside the company. (cnbc.com) (reuters.com) In a memo sent Thursday, Meta said it will eliminate 10% of its workforce starting May 20 and stop hiring for 6,000 open roles. CNBC and Bloomberg reported the cuts are part of a push to offset heavier artificial-intelligence spending. (cnbc.com) (bloomberg.com) Three days earlier, Reuters reported that Meta had begun installing software called Model Capability Initiative on U.S. employees’ computers. Internal memos described the tool as capturing mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and periodic screen snapshots across work-related apps and websites. (reuters.com) (computerworld.com) The basic idea is simple: an AI agent is software meant to carry out office tasks on its own, like filling forms, navigating menus, or copying data between tools. Meta’s memos said internet data does not show enough of that step-by-step computer use, so the company wants recordings of real employee workflows. (reuters.com) (platformer.news) Meta told Reuters the monitoring would apply only to work activity, not personal browsing, and said employees could pause collection in some cases. Platformer reported workers still described the rollout as intrusive, especially because it arrived in the same week as the layoff memo. (reuters.com) (platformer.news) At the same time, Meta is buying more computing capacity to run those systems. Amazon said Friday that Meta signed a multiyear agreement to use AWS Graviton processors, with deployment starting at tens of millions of CPU cores and room to expand. (aboutamazon.com) (techcrunch.com) That detail stands out because Graviton chips are central processing units, not the graphics processors that have dominated the recent AI boom. TechCrunch reported Meta is using them for agentic workloads, a sign that some AI services are shifting toward cheaper, more general-purpose chips once models are already trained. (techcrunch.com) (aboutamazon.com) The spending backdrop is large. NBC News reported Meta planned to raise 2026 AI spending to about $135 billion from $72 billion in 2025, while Reuters said the company has reorganized internal programs around automating more knowledge work. (nbcnews.com) (reuters.com) Put together, the week’s disclosures show three parts of the same strategy: fewer people, more data from the people who remain, and much more infrastructure to run the software Meta wants to build. (cnbc.com) (reuters.com) (aboutamazon.com)
