Meta cuts 8,000 jobs while forcing 7,000 employees into new AI roles to fund massive investments

Meta Employees Are Scrambling to Use Up Benefits Ahead of Layoffs

Ahead of Meta's latest round of mass layoffs tomorrow, some employees are deserting offices, abandoning their work, and loading up on perks they might soon lose, several people at the company tell WIRED. Two employees describe a widespread rush to use up an annual $2,000 flexible benefit, which can cover a variety of expenses including health and wellness activities. A separate triennial credit of $200 toward the purchase of audio gear has led to a scramble to purchase Apple AirPods and other headphones. Another source says Meta offices have been largely empty this week, as people prioritize polishing their résumés and gather offsite to commiserate with friends for what may be their final time as colleagues. Employees are variously "paralyzed," "coasting," and "panicked," sources say. Meta plans to lay off about 10 percent of its nearly 80,000 employees on Wednesday, with notices going out to affected workers' personal and corporate email addresses at 4am in their local time zone, according to a company-wide memo sent on Monday. The cuts are coming at a time when the social media giant behind Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook is enjoying record-high profits. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg insists that the company must free up cash to invest in AI data centers, and that Meta can perform just as well with fewer employees because of AI technologies that augment human labor. Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. The company has undergone three previous large rounds of layoffs since 2022, including as part of Meta's one-time "year of efficiency" drive in 2023. But even though the latest round is smaller than a couple of those, it is drawing widespread scrutiny because it comes at a time of societal anxiety about AI's impact on jobs. Inside Meta, the imminent cuts are among several concerns that have sunk morale to unprecedented depths, according to 16 current and former employees who recently spoke to WIRED. Employees also have been frustrated by being "drafted" onto a new AI team without any choice and the rollout of surveillance software that tracks US workers' laptop use to train AI models. Meta plans to also internally restructure as it conducts sweeping layoffs, transferring 7,000 remaining staff to "AI initiatives" and converting more managers into individual contributors. That would bring the total number of those affected -- either laid off or placed in a new role -- to 20 percent of the current workforce, Reuters reported on Monday. WIRED independently confirmed this reporting. Some parts of the company have been told they won't be affected at all. But in recent days, employees who are bracing for changes have shared checklists internally about benefits to take advantage of, and are saving documents such as performance reviews and pay stubs, according to one worker. Some teams are meeting up at bars and restaurants near Meta offices in New York and Menlo Park on Tuesday and Wednesday to eat and drink away their sorrows, several employees said. Management has encouraged employees not to come into offices on Wednesday.

Meta lays off thousands of employees to offset AI investments

Meta has reportedly notified thousands of employees that they've been laid off as the company attempts to compensate for its hefty AI investments. In an email from Meta management shared by Business Insider, impacted staffers were told that the planned headcount reduction was part of the company's "continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making." Reports of an upcoming wave of layoffs started circulating in March, though at that time Meta was believed to be cutting up to 20 percent of its total company headcount. According to a recent memo shared in May, the layoffs are now believed to be impacting approximately 8,000 people, around 10 percent of Meta's 78,000 employees. The layoffs follow Meta forecasting in January that it will spend $115 billion-$135 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, which would be used to "support our Meta Superintelligence Labs efforts and core business." That's almost double the $72.22 billion spent by the company in 2025 by comparison. Alongside cutting active roles, Business Insider reports that Meta is moving more than 7,000 staffers to work on new AI initiatives, and 6,000 open roles are being closed, according to Bloomberg. "We want to say again that we're grateful for your contributions. Your impact at Meta has been an important part of our story," Meta said in closing the memo to laid off employees. Some of those impacted have postedaboutbeing laid off on LinkedIn, showing their Meta employee badges and confirming that the cuts are now underway. One former employee mentions she was let go alongside "8,000 metamates." We have reached out to Meta to confirm how many employees were affected.

Those spared latest Meta job cuts forcibly reassigned to AI roles

Meta's massive role reshuffle begins today, with thousands of staff being transferred to AI-focused teams and their managers reportedly laid off. The tech giant is reassigning 7,000 workers to AI projects, eliminating around 10 percent of its current workforce, and closing 6,000 open positions, according to Reuters, which saw copies of the internal memos. The workforce changes, the latest in a series of moves that started 2022, will affect roughly 20 percent of Meta's approximately 78,000 employees. Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer, penned the memos to affected staff. Some have already begun their new AI-related duties, while the rest will be told of their fates today, she reportedly said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI-native design principles ⁠into their new org structures," Gale's memo read. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." This flatter structure will involve, in part, managers being either laid off or moved into roles where they are producing work instead of overseeing teams. Previous memos sent to staff in April stated that top engineers - those who represented the company's "strong software engineering talent" - were being "selected" for brand-new divisions within the business. Among these were the Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator units, as well as Central Analytics. Once famed for letting its staff pick and choose their projects, Meta said those selected for this new AI mission had no say in the matter. Responding to an employee's question, Maher Saba, VP of AAI Engineering, wrote: "AAI is one of the company's highest priorities and we're resourcing it by moving our strongest talent to address it. Therefore, the transfers aren't optional." Both AI units were established for engineers to develop AI agents capable of automating and taking over duties previously undertaken by human employees. Those transferred to Central Analytics will work on ways of assessing productivity and analytics for agent development. According to Gale's memo, another new unit called Enterprise Solutions will soon be established, but Meta has not yet revealed details. The Register asked Meta for a statement, but it did not immediately respond. Gale's language regarding "flatter structures" echoes chief Mark Zuckerberg's wording from Meta's January earnings report, promising to flatten teams over the coming year. "We're elevating individual contributors, and flattening teams," Zuck wrote in a post-earnings note on January 28. "We're starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person. "I want to make sure as many of these very talented people as possible choose Meta as the place they can make the greatest impact - to deliver personalized products to billions of people around the world. And if we do this, then I think we'll get a lot more done and it's going to be a lot more fun." Reports surfaced around the same time about a major round of job cuts at the company, equivalent to 20 percent of its workforce, or around 15,000 roles, but it was unclear when or if this would materialize. Meta's latest round of layoffs follows a smaller-scale round in March, affecting 700 roles across Reality Labs, the social media division, and recruitment. The changes come against a backdrop of Meta investing heavily in AI, with the company saying it plans to spend between $162 billion and $167 billion this year, up from $118 billion in 2025. The company has reportedly also tried tempting top AI talent to join its ranks with nine-figure pay packets, and ex-OpenAI players with $100 million sign-on bonuses. Meta slashing roles to embrace AI replacements has led to protests across its Menlo Park HQ and internal Workspace comms platform, Reuters reports. First announced in April, Meta said it would be tracking mouse clicks and keystrokes to train AI rather than assess staff productivity. A company spokesperson told the BBC: "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them." They said the data is not used for any other purpose, and there are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content. But Meta staff have expressed their disdain for the changes in various ways, including by setting up an online petition - which now has over 1,000 signatures - and plastering flyers all over US offices referring to the company as an "Employee Data Extraction Factory." ®

Exclusive: Meta lays out plans for May 20 restructuring in internal document

NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) - Meta (META.O), opens new tab detailed its layoff plans for this week in a memo shared with employees on Monday, saying cuts to 10% of its workforce globally would be accompanied by a new round of organizational changes aimed at improving the company's AI workflows. The Facebook owner is planning to lay ⁠off 10% of its employees on Wednesday, with notifications going out in three batches globally at 4 a.m. local time, according to the memo, seen by Reuters. In the memo, Meta's head of human resources, Janelle Gale, told employees that "many leaders will announce org changes" in coordination with the layoffs. As part of that, the company plans to move 7,000 employees ⁠to new initiatives related to AI workflows and to eliminate managerial roles, she said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new ⁠org structures. We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts ⁠that can move faster and with more ownership," she wrote. "We believe this will make us more productive and make ⁠the work more rewarding," she said. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the plan. Reporting by Katie Paul in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Matthew Lewis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Meta is reportedly 'reassigning' 7,000 employees to AI-focused roles - Engadget

Meta is not only laying off thousands of workers on Wednesday due to artificial intelligence, it's also moving thousands to new roles within the company. According to Reuters and The New York Times, Meta HR head Janelle Gale has notified employees that 7,000 of them will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new AI tools and apps. Gale reportedly wrote in the internal memo seen by the publications that the restructuring "will make [the company] more productive and make ⁠the work more rewarding." The new organizations will use "AI native design structures" and will not have as many layers of management per employee, Gale reportedly wrote. She told employees to work from home on Wednesday, May 20, and to wait for Meta's email about their possible new roles, though some of the workers had already been transferred. The company will also be sending out notifications to some of the people that will be laid off that day. If you'll recall, Meta told employees in late April that it's cutting 8,000 jobs and will also be closing 6,000 open jobs. Gale reportedly told them in a memo at the time that it was "part of [Meta's] continued effort to run the company more efficiently" and will allow it to offset its other investments. While she didn't elaborate, Gale was most likely talking about Meta's bets on artificial intelligence. Companies across the tech industry have been actively laying off workers for a while now to put more of their money into their AI endeavors. Meta is betting big on AI after winding down its plans for the metaverse, which didn't quite take the world by storm as it had hoped. It's planning to build data centers with "tens of gigawatts" within this decade. It created a "superintelligence" team of AI experts, with company chief Mark Zuckerberg even hand-picking potential recruits and inviting them to his home. It's building AI agents and putting its AI chatbot in several of its products. The Times says Zuckerberg told investors the company is planning to spend between $115 billion to $135 billion this year, mostly on AI development. By the end of 2025, Meta had around 78,000 employees. The layoffs affecting 8,000 workers will, thus, eliminate nearly 10 percent of the current roles within the company. Reuters says Meta will even cut more jobs later this year. Workers affected by the layoffs will get 16 weeks of severance pay, with an additional two extra weeks for every year they'd been with the company.

Meta is reassigning 7,000 workers to AI jobs while laying off thousands more

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. A hot potato: It seems like Meta wants to follow Nvidia's route of essentially becoming an AI-first company. As part of restructuring plans that will see 10% of its workforce laid off, the social media giant is also reassigning 7,000 people to new, AI-focused jobs within the firm. Plans for the reassignments were laid out in a memo from chief people officer Janelle Gale, which was seen by Bloomberg. Gale wrote that 7,000 workers will be moved to four new organizations within Meta focused on building new AI tools, including agents and apps. The new groups include Applied AI Engineering, Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN, Central Analytics, and Enterprise Solutions. Reuters reports that Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN are part of Meta's "AI for Work" push, while Central Analytics will track productivity and the performance of these AI agents. Details of Enterprise Solutions are expected to be shared later. Gale added that the new organizations will use "AI native design structures" with leaner management layers designed to improve efficiency and productivity. She told employees to work from home on May 20 and to wait for an email from Meta about their possible new roles, with some joining those who have already been transferred. The reshuffle also involves smaller, faster-moving "pods," another sign that Meta is trying to rebuild parts of the company around AI agents rather than simply add them to existing teams. Some of the people set to be laid off will be notified of the bad news on Wednesday, too. Few companies are going all-in on AI quite like Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in April that the company's capital expenditure for the year would be $10 billion more than expected and could reach as much as $145 billion - more than what it spent in 2024 and 2025 combined. Zuckerberg said most of Meta's spending increase was due to higher component costs and additional data center costs to "support future-year capacity." As is almost always the case when companies spend more on AI, Meta is letting go of workers to help fund its investments. The firm is laying off around 8,000 employees globally, or about 10% of its total workforce, and it will no longer fill 6,000 open roles. Meta called the cuts part of its "push for efficiency," saying they would allow it to offset other investments - no prizes for guessing what those are. Adding fuel to the fire was news that Meta is also monitoring and recording employees' mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes. The purpose of this logging is to train Meta's AI agents so they can perform work tasks. The tool is reportedly called the Model Capability Initiative, and it can also take occasional screen snapshots while running on work-related apps and websites. Meta has told employees the data will not be used for performance reviews, though that has done little to calm concerns inside the company. Essentially, workers are training the AI systems that could eventually replace them. Reaction from staff was what you'd expect, especially as there is no way to opt out. Wired reports that an internal post protesting the system went viral inside Meta, while more than 1,000 workers have backed a petition opposing the software.

Meta Reassigns 7,000 Employees to Focus on A.I.

The company announced the changes two days before it plans to lay off 10 percent of its work force, or about 8,000 employees. Meta told employees on Monday that it was reassigning 7,000 workers to focus on new initiatives around artificial intelligence, the latest change in a company transformation spurred by the powerful technology. Employees will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new A.I. tools and apps, Janelle Gale, Meta's head of human resources, said in an internal memo. The organizations will use "A.I. native design structures" and have fewer managers per employee than other parts of the company, she said, adding that company leaders will send details about the new roles on Wednesday. The restructuring "will make us more productive and make ⁠the work more rewarding," Ms. Gale wrote. Meta declined to comment further on the changes. The reassignments were announced before layoffs of roughly 8,000 employees, or 10 percent of Meta's work force, on Wednesday. The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025. It had told workers late last month that some of their jobs would be cut as part of Meta's effort to be more efficient as it invested heavily in A.I. development. Across the tech industry, companies have been slimming down and refocusing their work forces in the age of A.I. Last week, the software giant Cisco announced it was laying off 4,000 employees as it dedicated more resources to A.I. Microsoft, Block and Coinbase also recently announced reorganizations as a result of the technology. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, has bet the future of his company on A.I. Meta is investing in data centers to power the technology and keep up with A.I. rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. In a call with investors in January, Mr. Zuckerberg said the company planned to spend $115 billion to $135 billion this year, much of it on developing new A.I. Meanwhile, Meta has dialed back its work on the immersive world of the metaverse, a previous big bet, and has laid off some employees in that area. The company has pushed employees to use A.I. in their daily work and started including A.I. use in many employees' performance reviews. Last month, Meta said it not only planned to cut 10 percent of its work force but would also close 6,000 open roles. Workers have been on edge. This month, a new policy on Meta's training of A.I. tools with employee data created outrage over privacy concerns. The company has also been reassigning employees to a new A.I. organization in the lead-up to the layoffs. In her memo, Ms. Gale also mentioned Wednesday's layoffs. She asked employees to work remotely that day and said emails about layoffs would be sent at 4 a.m. local time. Employees in the United States will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two extra weeks for every year they worked at Meta. "We know days like this are extremely hard, and we appreciate you showing up for each other," Ms. Gale said. Mike Isaac contributed reporting from Oakland, Calif.

Meta starts the 10% cut, with the Singapore office getting the 4 am note first

Meta Platforms began notifying thousands of employees on Wednesday that they are being laid off, Bloomberg reported, starting with the Asian hub in Singapore, where staff received the email at 4 am local time. European and US-based employees were notified early in their own time zones on the same day. The cuts implement the 10%-workforce-reduction commitment Meta first announced on 23 April as part of what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been framing as the company's efficiency-and-AI restructuring. The numbers Meta committed to in April are the ones playing out this week. Around 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of the headcount, are losing their jobs. An additional 6,000 open positions that the company had been planning to fill will be left unfilled. The two figures together are the part Wall Street has been pricing into Meta's operating-leverage forecast for the second half of the year; CNBC's April coverage framed the 10% cut against $72.2bn of 2025 capex and the at-least-$115bn capex guidance for 2026, both numbers tied directly to AI infrastructure. What gives the cuts their specifically operational character is the redeployment that came alongside them. Meta moved 7,000 employees into AI-focused roles on Monday, in Chief People Officer Janelle Gale's memo, before the 8,000-job cut started landing on Wednesday. The two announcements are the same restructuring viewed from opposite ends. The 7,000 redeployments are the headcount Meta is keeping, channelled into AI agents, apps, and infrastructure groups. The 8,000 cuts are the headcount Meta is letting go, drawn from across the corporate functions roster, the new structure says it no longer needs. The cross-sector pattern this fits inside is the one that has been visible across the past month. Standard Chartered told investors on Tuesday that it would cut more than 15% of its back-office roles by 2030 in HR, risk, and compliance, with chief executive Bill Winters describing the trade as replacing 'lower-value human capital' with AI. JPMorgan, Citi, HSBC, and Wells Fargo have all signalled AI-driven headcount efficiencies inside earnings-call commentary over the past two quarters. The Meta cuts are the largest single-day visible expression of the same trade in the technology sector, specifically. There is a generational read on the cuts worth flagging. The class of 2026 was booing commencement speakers who framed AI's labour-market impact as positive, and the Meta-Standard-Chartered double whammy across the past 72 hours is precisely the data point that would make those students' read of the labour market look prescient. The Goldman Sachs estimate from April put US AI-driven job losses at roughly 16,000 per month; Wednesday's notifications inside Meta would, on a single-week basis, account for half of that monthly figure inside one company. The corporate-finance read is the part Meta has been signalling most consistently. Zuckerberg's framing across the past three earnings calls has positioned AI capital expenditure as the company's defining strategic priority, with the corollary that operating expense (predominantly payroll) needs to compress to make the capex profile defensible. Meta's $72.2bn 2025 capex grew to a 2026 run-rate above $115bn through the first quarter, with most of the additional spend going to Nvidia silicon, data-centre power infrastructure, and the cooling-and-grid investments that have to land alongside the GPU procurement. The 10% headcount cut is the operating-leverage corner of the same balance-sheet transaction. What Meta did not disclose in the Bloomberg report is the specific functional breakdown of which teams are absorbing the largest share of the cuts. The 23 April announcement framed the cuts as falling primarily on corporate-functions roles (HR, marketing, communications, recruiting) rather than on engineering and AI-research bands; Wednesday's notifications are, on the cleanest read of the available reporting, broadly consistent with that framing. The company did not, on the available evidence, walk back any of its core engineering hiring commitments, including the offer terms that have produced the well-documented superintelligence-team poaching announcements through April and May. Meta has not addressed severance terms, internal-mobility options for laid-off workers, or whether the cuts will be implemented as a single tranche or staged across multiple weeks. The Singapore-first cadence suggests a single coordinated event rather than a rolling layoff. The next visible proof point will be Q2 reporting, where the operating expense reduction becomes formally visible in the company's reported numbers.

Meta slashes 8,000 jobs as it pivots towards AI

The tech company Meta kicked off a sweeping reorganization on Wednesday that will shrink its workforce and accelerate a pivot toward artificial intelligence. In an internal memo last month, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp said it would lay off around 10% of its workforce -- or about 8,000 people -- in May. Company spokesperson Erica Sackin on Wednesday confirmed to NPR that those affected employees have been notified. Another 7,000 Meta employees will see their roles change as part of the AI pivot, according to a source familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly about the topic. "To focus more on AI they are moving 7,000 people to teams that focus on AI projects," the person said. Sackin declined to comment on what teams were growing or shrinking as a result of the shakeup. The re-assignments were first reported by Reuters, which cited an internal memo saying the employees would be shifted to four new teams building AI tools and apps. NPR has not independently verified the contents of that report. Meta and other big tech companies have been placing huge bets on artificial intelligence, luring talent with giant pay packages and building multibillion dollar data centers to try to win the AI race -- one in which Meta lags behind competitors such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. In January, Meta forecast capital expenditures this year that are almost double what it spent last year. Meta's reorganization is part of a string of announcements across the tech sector in recent months of job cuts amid intensified focus and spending on AI. It also comes in the middle of a rough stretch for the company. It has been pulling back from the virtual reality "Metaverse" that CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted as the company's future when he launched it in 2021. Earlier this year, Meta also lost pivotal court cases in New Mexico and California claiming that its platforms have been harmful to children and young people's mental health. In June, Meta -- among other tech companies -- is scheduled to head back to court to face school districts that sued social media companies over claims they caused a costly mental health and social media addiction crisis among students.

Meta moves 7,000 people into AI roles the same week it cuts 10%

Chief People Officer Janelle Gale's Monday memo described 'smaller teams' and a 'flatter' structure built around new AI groups for agents, apps, and infrastructure. Layoffs are due later this week. The Meta Saga continues with layoffs and "reassigning". Meta Platforms is reassigning 7,000 workers to new artificial-intelligence-focused jobs as part of a broad corporate restructuring, according to an internal memo Bloomberg reviewed on Monday. The reassignments arrive ahead of staff reductions Meta has said will hit 10% of the workforce later this week. The memo, from chief people officer Janelle Gale, framed the new structure as 'flatter' with 'smaller teams'. The reorganisation creates several new groups built around AI products, including agents and apps, on Gale's framing. Meta has not publicly disclosed how the 7,000 redeployed employees map across those groups, or how the AI-product reassignments interact with the 10% layoff target. The two announcements arriving in the same week, and the redeployment landing first, is the part that gives the move its shape: existing employees with institutional knowledge are being moved into AI roles, and a separate set of workers are being pushed out. The macroeconomic context behind the move is the part that has been visible for three quarters. Meta's Q1 2026 capex run-rate is now $145bn and rising, on the company's own guidance. Daily active users declined for the first time in the same quarter. Mark Zuckerberg has, on the earnings call, made the AI-infrastructure spend the company's defining operational priority, and the people-side restructuring is the second leg of the same trade. The 8,000-job cut figure Meta confirmed in late April is the visible cost. The 7,000-person redeployment is the part designed to ensure the company has the AI-aligned headcount to absorb the capex. Where this sits inside the wider tech-labour cycle matters. Klarna has been the most public European example of the same trade, freezing hiring on the argument that AI lets the company do more with fewer people. Meta's version is a step further along the curve. The company is not just hiring fewer outside roles; it is moving its own headcount onto the AI side of the balance sheet, on the working assumption that the people best placed to build agents, app surfaces, and infrastructure are the people who already know the codebase. The political and reputational read is sharper than the operational one. Reassigning 7,000 staff to AI roles in the same week as cutting 10% is the kind of optics decision that has been arriving at Meta with regularity, where the company has historically run lay-offs alongside continued hiring growth in specific functional bands. The April 2026 announcement was the first time Meta described the cuts as part of a broader 'push for efficiency'; today's redeployment makes that framing concrete. What the company has not described is the actual functional makeup of the workers being moved versus the ones being let go, and whether the redeployment is a one-time event or the beginning of a rolling reorganisation. Janelle Gale's memo did not specify start dates for the new structure. Bloomberg's reporting indicates the layoffs are scheduled for later this week, which would place the formal end of the existing org chart on the same calendar as the start of the new AI-focused one. The company did not respond to a request for comment beyond what was in the Monday memo. What this does not resolve is the question several Meta-watching investors have been asking through the spring earnings cycle: whether the AI-spending posture the company has committed to ($145bn of Q1 capex and rising) is compatible with the productivity numbers that justify a 10% workforce cut. The market has not, on the past three weeks of Meta share-price action, given a definitive read either way. The first AI-product releases under the new org structure will be the first test of whether the redeployment translates into shippable output on the timescale Meta's capex commitments imply.

Meta is rapidly reorganizing its workers' jobs around AI: 'Transfers aren't optional'

Exclusive: Some employees will be moved to new teams focused on AI agents and cloud infrastructure As Meta races to recenter itself around artificial intelligence, the tech giant is mandating more than 7,000 workers must move to new teams, and it's radically changing some employees' jobs. The Guardian has also learned that some of these reassigned employees will shift to two new teams: one building AI cloud infrastructure and another that's building an internal AI agent codenamed Hatch. Late last week, Meta employees received a notice that engineers had been "selected" for reassignment and would begin reporting to the cloud infrastructure and Hatch teams by the end of this week. Meta made a similar move last month when it reshuffled at least 1,000 engineers onto a new data labelling team called Applied AI, or AAI - at first giving them the option to volunteer, but later telling workers, "transfers aren't optional." "Our work, infrastructure and our products are fundamentally changing as a result of the continued acceleration of AI," wrote Peter Hoose, vice-president of production engineering at Meta, in an internal post about the two new teams, viewed by the Guardian. "The pace of what we are building is unprecedented, and these are exactly the kind of challenges that define what we do best." A Meta employee referenced last month's reshuffle in a comment on Hoose's announcement, writing, "Does 'selected' imply this is an [Applied AI]-style draft rather than a voluntary move?" A Meta spokesperson confirmed the shift and said the teams are about 25 people each. Meta is also taking away some managers' direct reports and shifting these managers into roles where they're expected to produce work more than oversee others - a shift that's underway throughout Silicon Valley as companies embrace AI tools and try to flatten their management structures. This rapid-fire reorganization is stirring up discontent within Meta during an already volatile era. "The new orgs showcase a shift in top level management strategy towards micro-authoritarianism," said a Meta engineer, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press. Instead of empowering employees, it feels like Meta's attitude has shifted to, "'No, we tell you what to do, and command and order is the way forward,'" this employee told the Guardian. Meta is expected to lay off approximately 10% of its workforce this week - despite record earnings during the first three months of 2026. Workers are also riled up over the company's plans to surveil them extensively at work and use the data it collects to train AI models. The company has begun rolling out a monitoring tool called Model Capability Initiative, which tracks workers' mouse movements, keystrokes, every time they open and close their laptop and anything they copy and paste - and feed it into their AI model as training data. A Meta spokesperson told the Guardian: "If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them - things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus. To help, we're launching an internal tool that will capture these kinds of inputs on certain applications to help us train our models. There are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content, and the data is not used for any other purpose." The company's employees don't seem to be reassured by this. Historically, Meta was known for its generous perks and flexibility: high pay, free meals, and often giving workers the autonomy to choose what they worked on. But since Meta's first-ever layoffs in 2022, the company's internal culture has shifted. The Meta engineer interviewed by the Guardian said the company has been whittling away perks over time. "Small acts foreshadowed what was to come: rolling layoffs with months of uncertainty before confirmation, MCI, drafting ... It feels like they are trying to defeat our spirit by landing multiple attacks at once." All of this has been making Meta workers feel disillusioned at work. Last week, a group of employees began attempting to organize their colleagues to push back against Meta's AI plans. They posted flyers across at least five US Meta offices that asked questions like, "Want Meta to stop collecting employee data to feed to their AI models?" and asked employees to sign a petition demanding Meta to "not collect employee 'computer-use' data for the purposes of training AI Models". So far, more than 500 Meta employees have signed the petition, a Meta data scientist who requested anonymity for fear of career repercussions, told the Guardian. "Meta has an extreme culture of fear," they said, adding that the company typically quashes employee dissent. But, this is the "first time" Meta workers have rallied against the company in more than a year. In addition to this petition, a group of Meta workers in the UK are organizing to form a union with United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW). These latest developments mark a notable shift in the mood at the world's largest social media company. In the past, Meta employees have been outspoken and criticized management - including an employee-organized virtual walkout in 2020 over Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's handling of Donald Trump's posts encouraging violence against Black protesters. But since 2022 when layoffs began, workers have mostly been quiet. OpenAI, Google and Anthropic's consumer AI products are already in the lead, so Meta has been playing catch-up in the AI race. In January, Zuckerberg said in an earnings call that the company will spend up to $135bn on AI infrastructure this year "to train leading models and deliver personal super intelligence to billions of people and businesses around the world". Last month, Meta launched its AI model, Muse Spark, the first one to have come out of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Achieving these AI ambitions will require not just infrastructure, but also engineers - which means the company is treading a fine line as its layoffs and internal reorganizations impact employee morale.

Zuckerberg Tells the Tattered Remainder of His Workers That He Won't Conduct Another a Mass Firing for at Least Seven Months

Meta first told employees that the massive workforce cuts were coming back in April, leaving staff in employment limbo until Wednesday. According to the New York Times, the layoffs were announced in a company memo, in which Zuckerberg declared that "AI is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes" and that the "companies that lead the way will define the next generation." Per the NYT, Zuckerberg further noted in the memo that he doesn't expect another large culling to take place this year. You know, the year that's already close to halfway over. The not-particularly-comforting guarantee comes as morale at Meta is already wildly low. As Reuters reported in April, the social media behemoth recently installed new surveillance software on Meta apps and devices that's designed to track and store its workers' computer use -- down to every click, keystroke, and mouse movement -- in an effort to use that data to train AI models. In a memo obtained Reuters, Meta's chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth told staff that it was using the data to train AI agents capable of performing similar tasks. "The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work," read the memo, "and our role is to direct, review and help them improve." In other words, Meta employees are currently being forced to train agents expressly designed to do exactly what they do. Some workers are pushing back: according to the NYT's reporting, Meta buildings have been plastered with flyers decrying the mass train-your-replacement effort, and according to the Wall Street Journal, more than 1,500 staffers have signed a petition against the surveillance. As it stands, however, there's no way for the company's remaining employees to opt out of the AI-training program on their devices. Meaning that while they might be safe through the end of the year, the act of continuing to do their jobs could ultimately help put them out of one in the future.

Zuckerberg says he feels 'weight' of Meta layoffs

New York (AFP) - Meta began laying off roughly 8,000 employees Wednesday -- about 10 percent of its global workforce -- as co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg pushes to redirect resources toward an ambitious artificial intelligence agenda. According to Bloomberg, notifications went out beginning in the early morning hours, with Singapore-based workers among the first to be informed. In addition to the cuts, Meta said in April it would cancel plans to hire 6,000 people and shift 7,000 other employees into AI workflow-related roles. In a memo to staff Wednesday, posted by Business Insider, Zuckerberg expressed thanks to departing employees and sought to reassure those remaining. "It's always sad to say good-bye to people who have contributed to our mission and to building this company," he wrote. "I feel the weight of that." Zuckerberg said he did not expect additional company-wide layoffs this year, and acknowledged the company had fallen short in its communications with staff. He struck an optimistic tone about the company's direction, saying Meta was "one of the few companies positioned to help define the future" and reaffirming his goal of delivering "personal superintelligence" to users worldwide. The restructuring is the largest company-wide round of cuts since Zuckerberg's 2022-2023 "Year of Efficiency" campaign, which eliminated roughly 21,000 positions. The move comes as Meta dramatically ramps up spending on AI infrastructure. Meta has forecasted capital expenditures to reach between $125 billion and $145 billion for the year -- more than double the company's 2025 outlay.

As Meta lays off 10%, 7,000 employees will be moved into AI roles, source says

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, in Washington, D.C., on March 26.Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images file Meta is moving 7,000 employees into roles focused on artificial intelligence and consolidating them into four new organizations, according to a source familiar with the matter. The shift is part of a broader reorganization that is expected to be announced Wednesday, which will include layoffs affecting 10% of the company. The changes, which Meta first detailed in an internal memo in April, will include laying off about 8,000 employees and not filling approximately 6,000 open positions. Meta previously confirmed the April memo's authenticity to NBC News. "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making," Janelle Gale, now Meta's head of people, said in the April memo to employees. "This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here." Affected employees are expected to receive an email with details on the layoffs and reorganization early on Wednesday morning, a source familiar with the matter said, noting that notifications could vary by region. The changes are the latest in a string of structural decisions at the company leaning into AI while trimming other parts of the sprawling company, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The trend is one that's been seen across Silicon Valley and corporate America as AI has been perceived to have continued upside and the potential for monumental change across industries. Meta laid off hundreds of employees in March, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News. Those cuts affected at least five departments, including its Reality Labs virtual reality division, and were part of a larger reorganization. Facebook social teams, sales, recruiting and global operations were also affected. During a first-quarter 2026 earnings call last month, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li spoke to the shift toward AI. "We're very focused on leveraging AI tools to substantially increase our productivity, and we're seeing that reflected in the accelerating output from our engineers," she said. "So I think we will be continuously evaluating how we're structured just to make sure we're best set up to deliver against our priorities over the coming years." In April the company said it was increasing 2026 capital expenditures to $125 billion-$145 billion, from $115 billion-$135 billion. The higher amount was attributed to "expectations for higher component pricing this year and, to a lesser extent, additional data center costs to support future year capacity," according to Meta's first-quarter 2026 report. Investors, though, might still have their reservations. Meta's stock is down nearly 9% for the year, which puts the company in fifth place among the "Magnificent 7" tech companies in terms of growth for the year, only ahead of Tesla and Microsoft. Meanwhile, since Meta reported earnings at the end of April, the company has seen a nearly 10% slump. After Meta reported first-quarter 2026 earnings, analysts at JPMorgan Chase downgraded Meta shares and said they think "Meta has a more challenging path to returns" compared with its rivals in the AI race. At Bank of America, analysts warned that Meta's moves might not be "sustainable long-term." "Meta is investing even more in capacity for AI capabilities, and reducing headcount to make room for added expenses," Bank of America analysts said. "This AI investment cycle is proving to be bigger than expected, and returns are less clear vs Cloud providers." Meta employed 77,986 workers as of the end of March 2026, down from its high of 86,482 in 2022.

Meta cuts 8,000 jobs amid record $56B quarterly revenue as Zuckerberg bets $145 billion on AI infrastructure

Meta will begin cutting approximately 8,000 jobs on 20 May, the largest single round of layoffs the company has undertaken since its 2023 restructuring, in a move that lays bare the scale of Mark Zuckerberg's bet that artificial intelligence infrastructure is worth more than the people it replaces. The company is also cancelling 6,000 open requisitions, bringing the effective headcount reduction to 14,000 positions. The cuts arrive not during a downturn but during a period of record financial performance. Meta reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $56.31 billion and net income of $26.8 billion. Full-year 2025 revenue was $201 billion, up 22 per cent year over year, with free cash flow of $43.6 billion. The company is not shrinking because it is struggling. It is shrinking because it has decided that the return on AI infrastructure exceeds the return on human labour, and it is converting one into the other on a scale that no technology company has attempted before. Meta has raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from $72.2 billion in 2025 and $39.2 billion in 2024. Nearly all of the increase is directed at data centres, Nvidia GPUs, custom silicon, and infrastructure to support the company's Llama model ecosystem and recommendation systems. In the first quarter alone, Meta added $107 billion in new contractual commitments for cloud and infrastructure deals, and it has committed $27 billion to a joint venture with Nebius for a gigawatt-scale AI data centre campus in Louisiana. Bank of America has estimated that the layoffs could generate $7 billion to $8 billion in annualised savings, a fraction of the capital expenditure plan but a meaningful contribution to the operating margin that CFO Susan Li has pledged to protect. Li told investors during the Q1 earnings call that the company believed a leaner operating model would allow it to move more quickly while helping to offset its infrastructure investments. She also acknowledged that executives "don't really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future," a remarkable admission from a CFO whose company is simultaneously reporting record profits. The arithmetic is blunt: Meta is spending more on AI infrastructure in a single year than the combined annual revenue of most Fortune 500 companies, and it is funding part of that spending by eliminating the jobs of people who helped build the business that generates the revenue in the first place. The financial case for the restructuring is coherent. The human experience of it is considerably less so. Meta's record quarterly results were reported three weeks before the layoff notifications are scheduled to go out, a sequence that has produced what employees and industry observers have described as a particularly corrosive form of corporate dissonance. Zuckerberg held a company-wide town hall on 30 April to address the cuts directly. He was explicit about one thing: AI tools were not driving the job losses. "Getting everyone internally to use AI tools and getting to do the work more efficiently is not the thing that's driving layoffs," he said. He did not, however, identify what was driving them, and the silence has fuelled anxiety across the company. Meanwhile, Meta has been cutting compensation for the broader workforce while dramatically increasing it for AI researchers. Median total compensation at Meta fell from $417,400 in 2024 to $388,200 in 2025. The stock portion of annual raises was cut by 5 per cent in February 2026, on top of a 10 per cent reduction the previous year. At the same time, Zuckerberg has been personally recruiting AI researchers with compensation packages reportedly reaching $100 million to staff Meta Superintelligence Labs, the division he launched last year under former Scale AI chief executive Alexandr Wang. The gap between those two realities, shrinking pay for most employees and nine-figure packages for a select few, has produced what multiple reports describe as an atmosphere of resignation. Employees have built at least three countdown websites tracking the days until 20 May, one of which carries the header "Big Beautiful Layoff." Data from Blind, an anonymous professional network that requires work email verification, shows Meta's overall employee rating has declined 25 per cent from its peak in the second quarter of 2024, with a 39 per cent drop in its culture rating. In every category other than compensation, Meta now underperforms Amazon, Google, and Netflix. Compounding the mood is a programme called the Model Capability Initiative, which Meta deployed on US employees' work laptops in April. The software captures mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and screenshots across a designated set of work applications. Meta has said the data is used to teach AI agents how humans navigate software, not as a general surveillance tool. Employees at several US offices have responded with visible protest, distributing flyers that described the programme as an "Employee Data Extraction Factory" and citing the National Labour Relations Act. Workers have characterised the tool as "dystopian" and created an online petition urging Zuckerberg to shut it down, with some reporting that their work computers have slowed noticeably since the programme was installed. The objection is not merely about privacy. It is about the implication: Meta is asking its remaining employees to generate the training data that will teach AI systems to replicate the computer-use patterns of the very roles being eliminated. The programme may well be a legitimate research initiative, but its timing, weeks before mass layoffs, has made it impossible for employees to read it as anything other than a preview of their own obsolescence. Including the May round, Zuckerberg has now overseen the elimination of roughly 33,000 positions since 2022. The 2022 cuts corrected pandemic-era over-hiring. The 2023 round was framed as a "year of efficiency." Early 2025 cuts were presented as performance management. The January and March 2026 reductions, which removed approximately 1,700 employees from Reality Labs, recruiting, and other divisions, were targeted. The May round is different: it is a company-wide structural reorganisation that touches every major business unit, with teams being reconstituted into AI-focused "pods" under Wang's Superintelligence Labs division. More layoffs are expected this year, including a potential round in August and another in the autumn, according to people with knowledge of the plans. Earlier reporting suggested the total reduction could eventually reach 20 per cent of the workforce. Meta is not alone in converting payroll into AI capital expenditure. Microsoft announced its first-ever voluntary retirement programme the same week, offering buyouts to roughly 7 per cent of its US workforce. Oracle cut an estimated 30,000 employees in March. Amazon eliminated 16,000 corporate roles in the first quarter. Across the technology sector, almost 110,000 jobs have been lost at 137 companies so far in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, after roughly 125,000 cuts in all of 2025. The theory behind Meta's restructuring is that a smaller number of highly talented people working alongside powerful AI systems can accomplish what previously required entire departments. Zuckerberg has described the vision as developing AI-powered products that amount to a kind of "personal superintelligence" for billions of users. The Superintelligence Labs division, the AI-focused pods, and the massive infrastructure spending are all oriented toward that goal. Whether the bet pays off depends on whether the AI systems that Meta is building at a cost of more than $100 billion a year can generate enough incremental revenue, through improved advertising targeting, content recommendations, and new AI-powered products, to justify both the infrastructure spending and the loss of institutional knowledge that comes with eliminating 10 per cent of the workforce in a single month. The human cost of the technology industry's AI pivot is not evenly distributed. The roles being eliminated at Meta are concentrated in recruiting, sales, middle management, and non-AI-adjacent product work, areas where the skills gap between what employees currently do and what the company now needs is too wide for incremental retraining to bridge. The roles the company is actively hiring for, at salaries between $62,000 for entry-level positions and $240,000 or more for senior AI research scientists, are almost entirely in machine learning, infrastructure engineering, computer vision, and natural language processing. Zuckerberg has been through this before. The 2023 efficiency programme, which produced 21,000 job cuts across two waves, was followed by a period of exceptional financial performance that silenced critics and sent the stock to record highs. This time, the market has been less forgiving: Meta's stock is down roughly 7 per cent year to date, underperforming every megacap peer except Microsoft. The broader pattern across Big Tech in 2026 suggests that investors are rewarding the same playbook at every company that adopts it: cut headcount, redirect the savings to AI infrastructure, and let the stock price validate the decision. For the 8,000 people receiving notifications this week, the validation will be someone else's. For Zuckerberg, the question is whether personal superintelligence, a product that does not yet exist, can justify a restructuring whose costs are immediate, measurable, and borne by people who did nothing wrong except work in roles that an algorithm has not yet learned to perform.

Meta shifts 7,000 employees into four new AI units ahead of mass layoffs - SiliconANGLE

Meta shifts 7,000 employees into four new AI units ahead of mass layoffs Meta Platforms Inc. is reportedly reassigning about 7,000 workers into new artificial intelligence roles as part of the broader restructuring that brings layoffs of roughly 8,000 staff into effect on Wednesday. The reassignments were disclosed in a memo on Monday from Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale that was reviewed by Bloomberg, which first reported the move. Affected staff will be consolidated into four new organizations focused on AI products, including agents and apps, with Gale telling employees the new corporate structure will be "flatter" with "smaller teams." The four new groups are reported to include Applied AI Engineering, Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN, Central Analytics and Enterprise Solutions, the first two forming part of an "AI for Work" push, while Central Analytics is tasked with tracking the productivity and performance of Meta's internal AI agents. The units will use "AI native design structures" with fewer management layers per employee than the rest of the company, per the memo. The reshuffle sits alongside the job cuts confirmed in April, which take effect tomorrow, May 20 that reduce Meta's headcount by approximately 10%. About 6,000 open positions are also being eliminated. Notifications to affected employees were due to land early Wednesday morning, though a source told NBC News timing could vary by region. U.S. workers being let go will receive 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for each year of service and 18 months of health coverage. Meta's headcount stood at 77,986 at the end of March, off a 2022 high of 86,482. The latest round is the deepest cut Meta has made since 2022 and 2023, when it shed more than 21,000 jobs in what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called the "year of efficiency." It also comes on top of two smaller 2026 rounds: about 1,500 Reality Labs staff in January and roughly 700 more in March across Reality Labs, Facebook, recruiting, sales and global operations. The cash freed up by the cuts is heading straight into AI. Meta now expects to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion on capital projects this year, lifted from a $115 billion to $135 billion range. Data centers, custom silicon and other AI infrastructure account for most of the bill. Meta has been trailing well behind OpenAI Group PBC, Google LLC and Anthropic PBC in the generative AI race. Chief Financial Officer Susan Li framed the restructuring on Meta's first-quarter earnings call last month, saying the company is "very focused on leveraging AI tools to substantially increase our productivity" and is "seeing that reflected in the accelerating output from our engineers." Tech-sector layoffs have hit approximately 134,000 people in 2026 to date, according to data from Trueup's Tech Layoffs Tracker.

Meta reportedly reassigns 7,000 jobs ahead of mass layoffs

SiliconRepublic.com has asked Meta about the extent of layoffs in Ireland. Meta is reportedly reassigning 7,000 workers to new, more AI-aligned roles, just ahead of the sweeping layoffs expected at the company tomorrow (20 May). According to a memo, first reported by Reuters, Meta's human resources head Janelle Gale said that the new corporate structure will be "flatter", with "smaller teams". "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles ⁠into their new org structures. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." New departments where employees are being transferred include Applied AI Engineering, Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN, Central Analytics and Enterprise Solutions. This, as workers at the company are reportedly dissatisfied with leaders over recent moves, with angry internal communications and a petition against Meta's mouse-tracking software used to train the company's AI models. Meta's work structure overhaul comes after the company decided to cut 8,000 jobs - or 10pc of the workforce - last month, in an effort to mitigate its AI-related expenses. Plus, 6,000 planned recruitments at the company have also been halted as a result. Current headcount at Meta stands at 77,986 as of 31 March, with around 1,800 in Ireland. SiliconRepublic.com has asked Meta about the extent of layoffs in Ireland. The social media giant's move reflects the growing importance AI is taking at the workplace - no longer an optional tool used to improve productivity. Earlier this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that 2026 might be the year "AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work". "We're starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person," he said. Zuckerberg is also reportedly developing an AI-powered version of himself to interact with employees. Similar views around workforce thinning were shared by Amazon after the company laid off 16,000 jobs in January, as well as Block, which cut 4,000 jobs. Block head and chair Jack Dorsey said that a "majority of companies" will reach similar conclusions around smaller teams and make similar structural changes "within the next year". Meanwhile, reports suggest that AI's uptake in many Irish and UK-based organisations is not adequately supported by targeted investment in skills and technology adoption. As one of the biggest AI spenders, Meta recently upgraded its capital expenditure budget to go up to $145bn. The company said the budget would help fund its Superintelligence Labs efforts, higher component pricing and additional data centre costs. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Meta Begins 8,000 Job Cuts, Starting in Singapore

Approximately 49,000 workers were laid off in 2026 as companies adopted a more AI-reliant business model. Meta has reportedly begun cutting staff in Singapore as the company executes a plan to reduce employee numbers by 8,000 to lean more heavily on AI. Emails were sent out at 4:00 am Singapore time to affected employees, and staff in the US and Europe were also expected to be notified that morning, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Meta's engineering and product teams are expected to be hit hardest. Meta is one of several Big Tech firms cutting staff while investing heavily in AI infrastructure in an effort to streamline operations and reduce costs. An estimated 49,135 layoffs have occurred in 2026 from US companies as a result of AI integration. The cuts have also hit crypto firms, such as digital payments platform Block, which laid off 4,000 workers in March, while Coinbase and Crypto.com also recently cut about 700 and 180 employees, respectively. A memo from Meta's head of people, Janelle Gale, seen by Bloomberg, said Meta's "flatter structure" and "smaller teams" would enable the company to move faster than before. "We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," Gale wrote. The people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that additional layoffs could follow later in the year. Related: Hong Kong's Boyaa Interactive eyes $70M crypto treasury expansion Earlier this month, employees at Meta widely criticized a company initiative to collect data from their devices, such as keystrokes, mouse movements and screen content, for the company to train its AI models. Meta's aggressive spending on AI infrastructure has also caused investor concern that it won't pay off. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company has already poured more than $100 billion into AI, and it also plans to build the world's biggest AI facility in the US state of Louisiana, potentially valued at $200 billion. The amount is more than the $80 billion that Meta poured into the metaverse before shifting its vision to mobile as it shut down the VR version of Horizon Worlds, the company's virtual reality social network that was intended to underpin its broader metaverse strategy.

Meta Just Began Laying Off 8,000 Workers Worldwide to Make Room for AI

Thousands of tech workers will soon be out of a job. Earlier today, Meta started to lay off its employees in a restructuring effort to reduce its headcount by 10 percent. The company confirmed that artificial intelligence was a driving factor in its decision. In a memo, Janelle Gale, Meta's chief people officer, said to employees that in addition to the layoffs, the company will also move another 7,000 staffers into new AI-focused roles. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership... We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," she noted. The layoffs were announced formally by Gale a month prior. At the time, she also confirmed Meta would close an additional 6,000 open roles. Employees were told to work remotely on Wednesday as the company began to slash over 8,000 jobs. According to Bloomberg, 350 jobs have been cut in Ireland, an estimated fifth of the corporation's workforce in the country.

Meta Cut 8,000 Jobs and Told Employees That AI Agents Will 'Primarily Do the Work' Now

Meta just laid off 8,000 employees to pay for its AI infrastructure -- and started tracking the keystrokes of those who remain, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company began cutting 10% of its workforce while simultaneously monitoring employees' mouse clicks and keystrokes to train AI models. When workers asked if they could opt out of the tracking program, a Meta executive said no. More than 1,500 employees have signed a petition demanding that the company stop collecting their computer-use data. The layoffs are meant to offset Meta's $145 billion investment in AI infrastructure this year, largely to build data centers and buy chips. The company also canceled 6,000 open positions and is reassigning 7,000 employees to AI-focused roles. Said Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth: "Our agents primarily do the work. Our role is to direct, review and help them improve." Employee sentiment is at its most negative level on record. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently cloned an AI version of himself, told staff he doesn't expect more company-wide layoffs this year, but Chief People Officer Janelle Gale didn't rule out future cuts.

Meta Planning to Cut 10 Percent of Workforce as Part of AI Overhaul

Meta detailed its layoff plans for this week in a memo shared with employees on Monday, saying cuts to its workforce globally would be accompanied by a fresh round of organizational changes aimed at improving the company's AI workflows. The Facebook owner is planning to lay off 10 percent of its employees on Wednesday, with additional deep cuts slated to come later this year, Reuters reported previously. In the memo, which was seen by Reuters, Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees the company plans to move 7,000 employees to new initiatives related to AI workflows and to eliminate managerial roles. In addition, "many leaders will announce org changes," she said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures. We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the plan. AI Overhaul Drives Restructuring The changes are part of a far-reaching overhaul planned at Meta this year, as the company surges its AI investments in a bid to center AI agents in both its product offerings and its approach to work internally. They reflect a broader pattern of AI-linked job cuts among major U.S. companies this year, particularly in the tech sector. In total, the layoffs and transfers will hit about 20 percent of the company's workforce. Some of the transfers have already happened, while in other cases employees will be notified on Wednesday, Gale said in her memo. Employees in North America were told to work from home on Wednesday. Meta has also closed an additional 6,000 open roles as part of the process, she told employees in an earlier memo. Headcount at the social media giant was 77,986 employees at the end of March, according to company filings. Employee Transfers to AI Units New initiatives where Gale said employees were being transferred -- or "drafted," as many staffers refer to it -- include Applied AI Engineering (AAI) and Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN, two teams previously announced by CTO Andrew Bosworth as part of Meta's "AI for Work" efforts. Both are aimed at developing AI agents that can autonomously carry out tasks currently performed by human staffers. Central Analytics, also a destination for transfer, was likewise mentioned in Bosworth's earlier announcement and would aim to measure productivity and analytics for agent development. Details on another new initiative called Enterprise Solutions would be shared soon, Gale said. The changes have prompted a revolt from Meta employees, who have been protesting the moves with flyers at the company's offices and in angry posts on its internal communications platform, Workplace. More than 1,000 employees have signed a petition decrying the installation of mouse-tracking software for use in training Meta's artificial intelligence models to help them replicate how humans interact with computers. Others have been openly tangling with company leaders, criticizing executives for dismissing privacy concerns about the mouse-tracking tech and for staying silent about layoff plans for more than a month after Reuters first reported them. During that month, many employees took to responding to executives' posts on Workplace with pictures of elephants, imploring them to address the layoffs, the so-called elephant in the room, according to examples seen by Reuters.

'She helped build the AI that replaced her': Viral Meta layoff post sparks fear over future of white-collar jobs

Meta layoffs: Meta's recent 8,000 job cuts coincide with a significant shift of over 7,000 employees to AI roles. A viral post alleges employees were first tasked with building internal AI tools before layoffs, sparking widespread concern about AI replacing white-collar jobs. This development highlights growing anxieties across various professional sectors. Listen to this article in summarized format Listen × Subscribe to Unlock AI Briefing and Premium Content New Year Offer 24 Hours Left Subscribe Now Already a member? Sign In What's Included * Exclusive Stories * Daily ePaper Access * Smart Market Tools * Curated Investment Ideas * Ad-lite Experience * Subscription Facebook's parent company Meta cut nearly 8,000 jobs, roughly 10 per cent of its workforce, and also shifted more than 7,000 employees into AI-focused teams at the same time. A viral post shared by a user named Julian claimed that employees at the company were first asked to build internal AI tools before layoffs started at multiple divisions. The timing of the post is significant and is now being widely discussed across social media, especially as Meta pushes aggressively into artificial intelligence. According to the post, Meta had organised a company-wide "AI week" a few months back and during that week, the company paused the regular work and employees were asked to familiarise themselves with AI tools, the post claimed. The post added that when the exercise was about to end, workers were reportedly expected to create early versions of internal AI products that could later be developed further inside the company. ALSO READ: Cockroach Janta Party has nearly 80% followers from Pakistan? Julian claimed that his wife spent months helping refine an AI product alongside senior executives and engineers, all while privately worrying that the same technology she was working on could one day replace her own job. "After that week, projects that were approved were chosen to continue further development with AI and engineers. For the past couple of months, my wife has been working with a superior and an engineer to refine her approved project, knowing that it could ultimately be what replaces her. Fast forward to today: She's canned," the post added. ALSO READ: Meta employee laid off after 10 years shares heartbreaking post "This isn't a sob story, we will figure out how to move forward. But this is a wakeup call to everyone wanting to find entry- to mid-level, work in a white collar field. AI is only going to make your job prospects worse," the post concluded. The post has garnered more than a million views and has struck a nerve with people online. The fear of losing jobs to AI is no longer confined to factory floors or repetitive manual work. It is increasingly spreading across offices, tech campuses, boardrooms, and engineering teams. Even the professionals helping build AI systems are starting to question whether they may also be creating the technology that could eventually replace them. How social media reactedAcross social media, users reacted with a mix of anger, anxiety, and resignation. "This is a hard nut to crack. Losing a job can be traumatising, I have been there," a netizen commented. "That's the part people don't talk about enough. Employees were literally training the systems that may end up replacing parts of their own jobs. Tough situation for a lot of talented people," read another comment. "forcing everyone to "build an ai tool " for a week and then doing mass layoffs is such a precise summary of where corporate ai is right now ngl," another one said. "I was at Cisco until last week. Same thing. They wanted us to figure out how to ad AI into our workstreams. I refused. Maybe that is whybI was let go," said another. Meta layoffs Mark Zuckerberg's Meta on Wednesday kicked off a major bloodbath with 8,000 layoffs -- among the largest in the social media giant's history. Employees were told in April that a 10% reduction of the workforce was coming on May 20, and earlier this week, they were reportedly informed that another 7,000 staffers would be reassigned to AI-focused positions. Employees across US, Singapore and Europe started receiving 4 am emails regarding their terminations. Zuckerberg defends Meta's bloodbath layoffsMeta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's brutal layoffs of 8,000 workers, saying "success isn't a given" as the tech giant pushes full steam ahead into the highly competitive AI sector. "Success isn't a given. AI is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes," Zuckerberg told employees in the missive, which was obtained by several news outlets. "The companies that lead the way will define the next generation." Mark Zuckerberg said it's "always sad to say goodbye to people who have contributed to our mission," and expressed his "gratitude" to all those impacted for their "hard work" -- adding that execs "do not expect other companywide layoffs this year."

Meta Doubles Down, Reassigns 7,000 Employees To AI Teams While Slashing 8,000 Jobs In Mark Zuckerberg's H

Meta's AI Restructuring Signals Major Strategic Shift Meta informed employees on Monday that about 7,000 workers would be reassigned into four newly created AI organizations focused on building AI-powered products and tools, the New York Times reported, citing an internal memo. Janelle Gale, Meta's head of human resources, reportedly said the new groups would operate with "AI-native" structures and leaner management layers aimed at improving efficiency and productivity. Managers are expected to share additional role details later this week. Meta did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comments. The restructuring comes as Meta increasingly prioritizes AI development across its businesses, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta Layoffs Come As Zuckerberg Doubles Down On AI Spending The workforce overhaul precedes planned layoffs affecting around 8,000 employees, or nearly 10% of Meta's workforce. The company employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025, the report noted. Meta had previously disclosed plans to eliminate thousands of jobs and close about 6,000 open positions as it reallocates resources toward AI infrastructure and development. Big Tech Companies Race To Rebuild Around Artificial Intelligence The company has also reportedly scaled back some metaverse-related efforts while increasing employee expectations around the use of AI tools in day-to-day work. Price Action: Meta shares closed Monday at $611.21, down 0.49% and slipped another 0.083% to $610.70 in after-hours trading, according to Benzinga Pro. According to Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings, META ranks in the 89th percentile for Growth, though the stock continues to show a negative trend across short, medium and long-term time frames. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo: FotoField on Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Meta to lay off 100 in Israel, reassign 200 to AI

Meta (formerly Facebook) recently announced that it was laying of 10% of its workforce worldwide -- about 8,000 employees. The company also announced that 7,000 employees would be transferred to new positions related to AI. As previously reported by "Globes," more than 100 employees out of 1,000 Meta employees in Israel will lose their jobs. In addition "Globes" has learned that about 200 Meta Israel employees, 20% of the workforce in Israel, will be transferred to new jobs in teams dealing with the development of AI. In addition, several dozen mid-level managers are expected to lose their managerial positions. The move is part of the streamlining policy led by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to reduce layers of management that he says are slowing down the teams' work pace. "Bloomberg" has reported that the company estimates that another round of layoffs is expected later this year. According to estimates received by "Globes," a similar round of cuts, amounting to about 10% of the company's workforce, is expected in August or September, ahead of Meta's annual Connect conference. Meta has already made several significant rounds of cuts, and Wall Street would have liked to see the company return to focusing on its core business -- advertising -- alongside investments in AI, while distancing itself from the metaverse vision. The company is expected to invest more than $100 billion in capital expenditure this year, mainly in developing technologies such as AI and the metaverse. The mass layoffs have been looming over Meta employees for weeks. The company announced the round of layoffs in April, and until the last minute, many employees still did not know if they would be affected. No response has been forthcoming from Meta Israel.

Meta told employees to work from home, then sent 4 am layoff emails to US staff, leaked memo reads: 'We're now at the stage where...'

Meta Layoffs: Meta has laid off approximately 8,000 employees globally, with many receiving termination emails early Wednesday. This move is part of a significant restructuring to prioritize AI development, reassigning thousands to AI-focused teams. Severance packages are being offered, but further cuts are anticipated as the company invests heavily in AI. Meta laid off roughly 8,000 employees on Wednesday, May 20. The company had asked its employees across regions, including the US and Britain, to work from home. Then at 4 am, the emails stared arriving with workers in Singapore getting termination emails landing in their inboxes as early as 4AM local time on Wednesday. According to Bloomberg, thousands of employees worldwide began receiving layoff emails early morning today. Employees across Europe and the United States are also expected to receive similar messages according to their respective time zones. ALSO READ: Uttar Pradesh weather today Ahead of the layoffs today, Meta employees were asked not to come to office as the layoffs rolled out. The company has also reassigned nearly 7,000 employees to newly formed AI-focused teams working on artificial intelligence products and AI agents. The latest round of job cuts is expected to primarily impact Meta's engineering and product divisions. According to Bloomberg, additional layoffs may take place later this year as Meta continues restructuring its workforce to prioritise AI-driven projects. Before the latest wave of layoffs and internal reshuffling began, the company had close to 80,000 employees worldwide at the end of March. In an internal memo, Meta's Head of People Janelle Gale explained the company's thinking behind the restructuring. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership," Gale wrote. "We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," she added. Workers laid off in the US will get 16 weeks of base pay as severance, plus two extra weeks for every year spent at Meta. Healthcare and career support come bundled in. Employees outside the US will get similar packages on country-specific timelines. The latest layoffs are part of a wider restructuring plan aimed at shifting more resources toward AI projects. Reports suggest that additional job cuts could take place later this year as Meta continues reorganising teams around AI products and automation. According to reports, the company could spend between $125 billion and $145 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, with a large portion expected to go into AI data centres, custom chips, and model training systems. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence the company's biggest focus as competition intensifies with rivals like Google and OpenAI. Meta is expected to spend more than $100 billion on AI-related investments this year, including data centres, AI models, and advanced computing infrastructure. As AI becomes central to Meta's future plans, many employees have reportedly expressed concerns over layoffs and new internal policies. Reports claim that more than 1,000 employees signed a petition urging the company not to collect detailed device activity data, including keystrokes and screen activity, for AI training purposes. The concerns were linked to an internal initiative designed to help AI systems better understand how employees work on computers. Zuckerberg later clarified to staff that the data was not being used for employee surveillance, but only for improving AI tools and agents. Investors have also raised concerns about the company's aggressive AI spending strategy. Analysts cited in reports said the latest layoffs may help Meta save around $3 billion, which remains only a small fraction of the company's expected AI expenditure. Meta's Chief Financial Officer Susan Li recently said the company is still trying to understand what its ideal workforce size should look like as AI continues to rapidly change the tech industry. Internal morale at Meta has also reportedly taken a hit in recent months. Anonymous employee reviews on workplace platforms showed a decline in overall satisfaction levels, especially regarding company culture and workplace stability, as the company pushes deeper into AI-focused restructuring. (With TOI inputs)

Meta layoffs to start from tomorrow: which teams will be affected? Here's the breakdown

Meta layoffs tomorrow: Meta is preparing to begin a major round of layoffs on Wednesday as part of a broader restructuring tied to the company's growing focus on artificial intelligence workflows. According to an internal memo seen by Reuters, Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees that the company plans to lay off 10% of its workforce globally this week, while also making significant organizational changes aimed at improving AI-driven operations, as per a report. The restructuring will not only include job cuts but also employee transfers into new AI-focused initiatives. Gale said around 7,000 employees will be moved into projects related to AI workflows, while some managerial roles will be eliminated as the company shifts toward flatter organizational structures with smaller teams, as per a Reuters report. The changes are closely linked to Meta's "AI for Work" strategy and several AI-centered units are expected to play a major role in the restructuring. Employees are being transferred to teams including: These initiatives are focused on building AI agents capable of performing tasks currently handled by human employees. Central Analytics, meanwhile, is expected to focus on productivity measurement and analytics tied to AI agent development. In the memo, Gale said many leaders redesigned their organizations using "AI native design principles," allowing teams to operate with fewer layers of management and faster decision-making structures, as per a Reuters report. Gale explained that, "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures. We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership," as quoted by Reuters. The layoffs and transfers together are expected to affect roughly 20% of Meta's workforce. Some employee transfers have already taken place, while others will be informed on Wednesday. Meta also previously closed 6,000 open roles as part of the restructuring process. The company had 77,986 employees at the end of March, according to filings. The restructuring has reportedly triggered backlash among employees. Workers have protested the changes through flyers at Meta offices and posts on the company's internal platform, Workplace, as per Reuters. More than 1,000 employees also signed a petition criticizing the installation of mouse-tracking software that Meta is reportedly using to train AI models designed to replicate human interactions with computers. Some employees also publicly questioned company leadership over privacy concerns tied to the tracking technology and the company's silence around the layoffs after Reuters first reported the plans. When will Meta layoffs begin? Meta's layoffs are expected to begin on Wednesday. How many employees will Meta lay off? The company plans to cut around 10% of its workforce globally.

Zuckerberg defends Meta's bloodbath layoffs: 'Success isn't a given' in AI push

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's brutal layoffs of 8,000 workers - saying "success isn't a given" as the tech giant pushes full steam ahead into the highly competitive AI sector. In a Wednesday memo, he tried to justify the purge, which kicked off with emails to targeted workers at 4 a.m. local time in their respective regions around the world. Another 7,000 staffers were reportedly set to be reassigned to AI-focused roles as part of the restructuring. "Success isn't a given. AI is the most consequential technology of our lifetimes," Zuckerberg told employees in the missive, which was obtained by several news outlets. "The companies that lead the way will define the next generation." "We're transforming our company to make sure it will always be the best place for talented people to have the greatest impact," he said. "People tell us that they appreciate the ability to take greater ownership and execute their vision with less bureaucracy and management to navigate." Zuckerberg said it's "always sad to say goodbye to people who have contributed to our mission," and expressed his "gratitude" to all those impacted for their "hard work" - adding that execs "do not expect other companywide layoffs this year." Meta did not immediately answer a request for comment. Some disgruntled employees at the Facebook, Meta and WhatsApp owner believe the 10% reduction that took place this week is just the beginning as Meta spends big on AI, with planned capital expenditures as high as $145 billion this year alone. Brittany Pierson, a Dallas-based content designer who spent more than four years at Meta, said she actually felt "so much relief" after getting the ax Wednesday because she had long worried that her role would be eliminated by artificial intelligence. "If you survive, then you need to start training yourself on an entirely new role that AI can't replace -- all while mentally preparing yourself for the next layoff, which, by the way, is rumored to be happening in August," Pierson said on Instagram Wednesday, part of a deluge of social media posts by impacted Meta workers. Current and former employees painted a picture of abysmal company morale on the workplace message board Blind, which allows users to post anonymously using their work email to verify their identity. One worker claimed she was laid off while seven months pregnant, while another said Meta's employees are "in desperate need of therapy" after years of constant job cuts and reorgs. Another Meta employee impacted by Wednesday's layoffs told The Post the company will probably do a "performance-based" round of layoffs later this year "so they can label it as not a mass layoff." Asked about Zuckerberg's reputation among employees, the newly-axed staffer said: "He doesn't give a s-t. He's focused on his bottom line." The employee added that the tech sector doesn't have "the security or longevity that it used to," speculating that "people are going to be making big career pivots right now to just escape tech." Matthew Young, a Seattle-based software engineer at Meta who was laid off after a year at the company, told The Post that he doesn't think the work he did will be easily replaced with AI. "That's the story they're telling us," Young said. "Does AI increase productivity? Yeah. Does it replace people? No." Meta previously said laid-off workers would receive severance packages with at least 16 weeks of base pay and another two weeks for each year of employment, along with health care and career support benefits. Zuckerberg cut more than 20,000 jobs across the company in 2022 and 2023 as he has sought to reduce bureaucracy amid the rise of AI. The new technology has increasingly been cited as a leading reason for job cuts, as Microsoft, Block, Coinbase and Cisco all recently announced mass layoffs or buyouts. In the first three months of 2026, the tech sector was hit with more than 52,000 layoffs - a 40% jump from the same period last year that was largely attributed to AI, according to reports from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Meta Layoffs: Singapore Staff Hit First as Zuckerberg Cuts 8,000 Jobs in Global AI Restructuring

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is laying off around 8,000 employees, representing roughly 10% of its workforce. The move aligns with the CEO's strategy to shift the tech giant toward artificial intelligence. The mass layoff marks one of the largest workforce resets in major tech giants. The layoffs started in Singapore, with employees getting termination emails early in the morning. Meta is implementing the strategy in phases. The Asian team members are receiving the notice first, then the Europeans, followed by the Americans. The process highlights Meta's global strategy of reshaping its workforce. Mark Zuckerberg is restructuring the organization with the focus on eliminating third-party management and non-core roles. This way, Meta is simplifying the organizational hierarchy to be more efficient and quicker. It looks like teams not aligned with the AI strategy are at greater risk. In an internal memo received by Bloomberg, Janelle Gale, Head of People, Meta, told employees, "The company aims to create a with smaller teams that can move faster and operate more efficiently."

Meta lays out details of May 20 restructuring in internal document

Meta detailed its layoff plans for this week in a memo shared with employees on Monday, saying cuts to its workforce globally would be accompanied by a fresh round of organizational changes aimed at improving the company's AI workflows. The Facebook owner is planning to lay off 10% of its employees on Wednesday, with additional deep cuts slated to come later this year, Reuters reported previously. In the memo, which was seen by Reuters, Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees the company plans to move 7,000 employees to new initiatives related to AI ⁠workflows and ⁠to eliminate managerial roles. In addition, "many leaders will announce org changes," she said. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures. We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership." A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the plan. The changes are part of a far-reaching overhaul planned at Meta this year, as the company surges its AI investments in a bid to center AI agents in both its product offerings and its approach to work internally. They reflect a ⁠broader pattern of AI-linked job cuts among major U.S. companies this year, particularly in the tech sector. In total, the layoffs and transfers will hit about 20% of the company's workforce. Some of the transfers have already happened, while in ⁠other cases employees will be notified on Wednesday, Gale said in her memo. Employees in North America were told to work from home on Wednesday. Meta has also closed an additional 6,000 open roles as part of the process, she told employees in an earlier memo. Headcount at the social media giant was 77,986 employees at the end of March, according to company filings. New initiatives where Gale said employees were being transferred - or "drafted," as many staffers refer to it - include Applied AI Engineering (AAI) and Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN, two teams previously announced by CTO Andrew Bosworth as part of Meta's "AI for Work" efforts. Both are aimed at developing AI agents that can autonomously carry out tasks currently performed by human staffers. Central Analytics, also a destination for transfer, was likewise mentioned in Bosworth's earlier announcement and would aim to measure productivity and analytics for agent development. Details on another new initiative called Enterprise Solutions would be shared soon, Gale ⁠said. The changes have prompted a revolt from Meta employees, who have been protesting the moves with flyers at the company's offices and in angry posts on its internal communications platform, Workplace. More than 1,000 employees have signed a petition decrying the installation of mouse-tracking software for use in training Meta's artificial intelligence models to help them replicate how humans interact with computers. Others have been openly tangling with company leaders, criticizing executives for dismissing privacy concerns about the mouse-tracking tech and for staying silent about layoff plans for more than a month after Reuters first reported them. During that month, many employees took to responding to executives' posts on Workplace with pictures of elephants, imploring them to address the layoffs, the so-called elephant in the room, according to examples seen by Reuters.

Ex-Meta worker warns of more firings to come -- despite Zuckerberg pledge that bloodbath is over: 'need therapy'

A freshly axed Meta employee warned yet another round of cuts will follow Wednesday's brutal layoffs in the months ahead -- despite assurances from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that this year's bloodbath is over. Brittany Pierson, a Dallas-based content designer who spent over four years at Meta, said she actually felt "so much relief" after getting laid off because she had long anticipated that her role was destined to disappear because of artificial intelligence. "If you survive, then you need to start training yourself on an entirely new role that AI can't replace -- all while mentally preparing yourself for the next layoff, which, by the way, is rumored to be happening in August," Pierson said on Instagram, one of many social media posts shared by ex-Meta workers Wednesday. "That's not normal. It's not healthy," she added in the two-minute video. Pierson's claim of additional layoffs contradicts Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pledge that the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp will not ax any more workers this year. "I want to be clear that we do not expect other company-wide layoffs this year," Zuckerberg said, according to Reuters. "I also want to acknowledge that we haven't been as clear as we aspire to be in our communication, and that's one area I want to make sure we improve." Wednesday marked the rollout of Meta's previously announced plan to slash roughly 10% of its workforce -- eliminating an estimated 8,000 jobs as the company pours billions into AI and restructures the social media giant around the technology. Meta has framed the layoffs as part of a "continued effort to run the company more efficiently" while shifting thousands of workers onto AI-focused initiatives, according to internal communications reported by Business Insider. Online, current and former employees painted a picture of a workforce rattled by seemingly nonstop restructuring, collapsing morale and fears that AI is steadily hollowing out white-collar jobs across Silicon Valley. Some vented their frustrations on the workplace message board Blind, which allows users to post anonymously after using their work email to verify their identity. One laid-off worker claimed to have lost her job at Meta while seven months pregnant. "I'm pretty devastated to hear the news that I'm laid off. I informed my manager that I was pregnant and initiated a parental leave request officially. Timing feels worse as I'm expecting my first baby this July ... I'm lost and feeling very stressed about how to go handle pregnancy," the worker wrote. Another employee admitted to feeling "bad for surviving" the companywide culling. "Please don't think people laid off from Meta are bad performers, I'm an average performing scrub and I feel so bad for surviving when my teammate got laid off," the worker said. Just before the layoffs began, one Meta employee wrote that the company's workforce was "in desperate need of therapy." "The amount of disrespect and chaos we deal with every day is unreal," the person wrote. "Meta employees are in desperate need of therapy after all the constant layoffs and reorgs. Mental health is at an all-time low." The Post has sought comment from Meta and Pierson. Pierson said the latest cuts felt fundamentally different from earlier Meta layoffs she witnessed. "In the past, when we knew a layoff was coming, the mentality was very much: okay, we just got to get through it, and if you survive, things will eventually go back to normal," she said. "This was just phase one of eventually phasing out that role entirely due to AI. Not just at Meta, but across the industry." A Meta employee affected by Wednesday's layoffs told The Post the company will likely do a "performance-based" round of layoffs later this year, "so they can label it as not a mass layoff." Asked about Zuckerberg's reputation internally, the worker didn't mince words. "He doesn't give a s-t," the person said. "He's focused on his bottom line." The employee said morale inside Meta has cratered amid fears of AI wiping out jobs across the tech industry. "I don't think it has the security or longevity that it used to," the employee said. "I think people are going to be making big career pivots right now to just escape tech. "In the past, if you got laid off from Meta, you could go and jump to another company like Google, Amazon or these other big tech companies," the worker added. "But now with this layoff, knowing that it is because of AI, you can jump to one of those other companies, but you could also end up being laid off there six months later." The employee also described mounting internal pressure to incorporate Meta's in-house AI tools into day-to-day work -- even when it meant replacing tasks workers felt capable of doing themselves. "We were monitoring our AI usage," the employee said. Managers appeared especially anxious during the restructuring as Meta flattened organizational layers and pushed some supervisors into lower-ranking, individual contributor roles, according to the source. "The managers are living in more fear than anyone," the worker said.

Mark Zuckerberg Reshapes Meta Workforce; Redeploys 7,000 Staff to AI Roles Amid Restructuring

Reportedly, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down on AI as the company's core growth engine. This shift highlights a major shift in its business strategy. Janelle Gale, Meta's Chief People Officer, explained in a memo, " Nearly 7,000 staff members would either be reassigned to or affected by bigger organisational changes. The company will also reduce several managerial positions as part of efforts to flatten reporting structures and create smaller, faster-moving teams." Other reports suggest that Meta has additionally frozen or eliminated around 6,000 open job positions during the process. As highlighted by company filings, "Meta had close to 78,000 employees globally at the end of March." Meta is reorganizing teams into smaller, agile 'pods' aimed at operating quickly and integrating AI at every level of operations. This aims to fulfil a dual objective: A major portion of the layoffs is expected to impact managerial positions. to reduce layers and improve efficiency.

Meta cutting close to 350 jobs in Ireland as they ramp up AI use | BreakingNews

Meta's Irish workers have been informed that their roles have been cut as the tech giant moves to cut 8,000 jobs across the world. The company began notifying workers around the world on Wednesday morning, part of a previously announced restructuring aimed at reducing costs while the company invests heavily in artificial intelligence. As the Irish Examiner reports, it is understood that around 350 Irish jobs are to be cut. Meta employs approximately 1,800 workers in Ireland, and the impacted staff have been notified that their roles are being cut. The tech giant has also informed the Department of Enterprise of the planned layoffs as they are required to under Irish law. Staff globally were encouraged to work from home while the company cut roughly 8,000 roles globally. This latest round of cuts is expected to hit Meta's engineering and product teams in particular, and additional layoffs could come later in the year, said people familiar with the company's plans, who asked not to be named as the information is not public. Speaking on the announcement, the Financial Services Union (FSU), which represents members of Meta staff, said the sector was reaching a "dangerous stage" where regulation is trailing implementation. "Decisions being taken by employers to utilise AI across their business are happening without adequate training for staff and without proper oversight." "Full and transparent stakeholder involvement is required from unions to employers and regulators to legislators to manage the change that AI will make to the workplace and to jobs. Without that collaboration, we will continue to see announcements of job losses like we have seen today," the FSU said. On Monday, Meta informed staff that some 7,000 workers have also been reassigned to newly formed teams that are focused on AI initiatives, including products and agents. The company, which has committed well in excess of $100 billion (€85.2 billion) to AI capital expenditures this year, had just under 80,000 employees at the end of March, ahead of the reassignments and layoffs.

Meta lays out plans for May 20 layoffs, restructuring, internal document says - The Economic Times

In the document, ⁠the Facebook owner's head of human resources also told employees that "many leaders will announce org changes" in coordination with the layoffs.Meta is planning to carry out its layoffs of 10% of its employees in ⁠three ⁠batches globally on Wednesday, with notifications going out at 4 a.m. local time, according to an internal document ⁠seen by Reuters on Monday. In the document, ⁠the Facebook owner's head of human resources also told employees that "many leaders will announce org changes" in coordination with the layoffs. As part of that, the company plans to move 7,000 ⁠employees to new initiatives related to AI workflows and to eliminate managerial roles, she said.

Zuckerberg says he feels 'weight' of Meta layoffs - VnExpress International

Meta began laying off roughly 8,000 employees Wednesday - about 10% of its global workforce as co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg pushes to redirect resources toward an ambitious artificial intelligence agenda. According to Bloomberg, notifications went out beginning in the early morning hours, with Singapore-based workers among the first to be informed. In addition to the cuts, Meta said in April it would cancel plans to hire 6,000 people and shift 7,000 other employees into AI workflow-related roles. In a memo to staff Wednesday, posted by Business Insider, Zuckerberg expressed thanks to departing employees and sought to reassure those remaining. "It's always sad to say good-bye to people who have contributed to our mission and to building this company," he wrote. "I feel the weight of that." Zuckerberg said he did not expect additional company-wide layoffs this year, and acknowledged the company had fallen short in its communications with staff. He struck an optimistic tone about the company's direction, saying Meta was "one of the few companies positioned to help define the future" and reaffirming his goal of delivering "personal superintelligence" to users worldwide. The restructuring is the largest company-wide round of cuts since Zuckerberg's 2022-2023 "Year of Efficiency" campaign, which eliminated roughly 21,000 positions. The move comes as Meta dramatically ramps up spending on AI infrastructure. Meta has forecasted capital expenditures to reach between $125 billion and $145 billion for the year - more than double the company's 2025 outlay.

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta kicks off major bloodbath with 8,000 layoffs as AI roils tech giant

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta on Wednesday kicked off a major bloodbath with 8,000 layoffs - among the largest in the social media giant's history - as a disruptive shift toward artificial intelligence continues to roil the tech giant. Employees were told in April that a 10% reduction of the workforce was coming on May 20, and earlier this week, they were reportedly informed that another 7,000 staffers would be reassigned to AI-focused positions. Meta's offices are set to be mostly deserted Wednesday after human resources chief Janelle Gale told North American employees to work from home in an email this week, according to an internal document earlier reported by Reuters. The companywide purge is taking place in three massive waves, as employees across the world are notified in emails at 4 a.m. local time in their respective regions. Singapore staffers were the first to receive the doomsday emails. Meta did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment. Staffers at the social media giant - which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - have been disgruntled ahead of the layoffs. Some workers hung fliers on the office walls with a petition to stop Meta's new program to track their data for AI training, while others swiped free snacks and laptop chargers from the building on Monday in case they lost their jobs by the end of the week, the New York Times reported. In the New York office, hundreds of employees planned to gather for drinks on Tuesday ahead of the layoffs, saying the event was meant to "commiserate or celebrate, pick your poison," according to a copy of the invitation seen by the outlet. One Meta employee told the San Francisco Standard ahead of the layoffs that the worker's office has been in "chaos" as employees fear they'll be axed. "I am generally dissatisfied with leadership and angry," the anonymous employee said. "This is as anxious and stressed as I have ever been at a job." Meta previously said laid-off workers would receive severance packages with at least 16 weeks of base pay and another two weeks for each additional year of employment, along with health care and career support benefits. In her memo, Gale said the layoffs were an effort to "run the company more efficiently" as it spends big on artificial intelligence. The tech firm has announced capital expenditures as high as $145 billion this year alone. That's more than twice the amount it spent in 2025, despite mounting investor jitters over an AI bubble similar to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Meta is expected to slash even more roles later this year, thought the exact timing and scope of those layoffs is unclear. Zuckerberg cut more than 20,000 jobs across the company in 2022 and 2023 as he has sought to reduce bureaucracy amid the rise of AI. The new technology has increasingly been named as a leading reason for layoffs, as Microsoft, Block, Coinbase and Cisco all recently announced mass layoffs or buyouts linked to AI. In the first three months of 2026, the tech sector suffered more than 52,000 layoffs - a 40% jump from the same period last year, with AI cited as a top driving factor, according to reports from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Meta employees told to work remotely Wednesday as company prepares to slash 10% of workforce: report

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has reportedly told its North American employees to work from home Wednesday - when it will lay off 10% of its global workforce as part of a major restructuring. The companywide bloodbath will take place in three waves, with impacted workers learning their fate by email at 4 a.m. local time in their region, according to an internal document obtained by Reuters. Meta's human resources chief Janelle Gale said in the document that executives "will announce org changes" alongside the layoffs. About 7,000 employees are expected to shift to new roles at the Facebook and Instagram parent. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new ⁠org structures," Gale was quoted as saying by Reuters. "We're now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts ⁠that can move faster and with more ownership. "We believe this will make us more productive and make ⁠the work more rewarding," she added. The company is slashing managerial roles as part of the reorganization as it relies more heavily on artificial intelligence tools to get work done. Ahead of the layoffs, one employee told the San Francisco Standard that the worker's office has been in "chaos" as employees fear they'll be axed. "I am generally dissatisfied with leadership and angry," the unnamed employee told the publication. "This is as anxious and stressed as I have ever been at a job." Meta had nearly 79,000 employees at the start of the year - meaning that the upcoming round of layoffs will rank among the largest in the social media giant's history. The company previously said that laid-off workers would receive severance packages including at least 16 weeks of base pay, plus another two weeks for each additional year of employment at the company. They'll also get healthcare and career support benefits. In a memo last month, Gale said the cuts were part of an effort to "run the company more efficiently" as the company spends heavily on AI development. Meta has said its capital expenditures will reach as high as $145 billion in this year alone, driven in part by its buildout of new AI data centers and higher memory prices. Meta did not immediately return a request for comment. The company is expected to conduct more layoffs in the second half of the year, though the exact timing and scope of those cuts has yet to be decided. Zuckerberg has sought to "flatten" Meta's management ranks in recent years. He slashed more than 20,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023 as part of what was infamously dubbed a "year of efficiency" at the company. The layoffs come amid ongoing layoffs blamed on AI, especially in the tech sector. The first three months of 2026 saw 52,050 tech layoffs -- a 40% jump from the same period last year, according to executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In March, AI led the list of causes employers listed for tech layoffs -- accounting for 15,341 of the firings, or 25% of the total. A month earlier, the figure was 10%.

Mark Zuckerberg leaked voice memo: Meta will train AI on employees work and keep plans confidential

The leak has raised concerns about privacy, layoffs and AI replacing jobs. Meta has begun laying off thousands of employees as the tech giant ramps up investments in artificial intelligence. Singapore was reportedly the first market affected, with workers receiving emails around 4 AM SGT on May 20 informing them that their services were no longer required. The layoffs come amid growing focus on AI-driven expansion at the company. At the same time, a leaked audio clip allegedly featuring Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg surfaced online. The recording, reportedly from an internal all-hands meeting before the job cuts, suggests Meta has been monitoring employee computer activity to train AI systems. Meta has not officially confirmed the authenticity of the recording. However, the audio has added to employee fears about AI replacing workers and companies collecting more data from their staff. In the leaked audio clip, Zuckerberg has allegedly been saying that Meta wants AI models to learn by observing how highly skilled employees use computers during real work tasks. Not only this, but he also added that the Meta employees are more valuable for AI training than outside contract workers because they are 'really smart people' whose actions can help improve advanced AI systems. Also read: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 leaks: Launch date, price in India, camera, display and other details we know Earlier reports also suggested that Meta is using software that tracks the user activity on their office device. The software is said to track mouse movements, clicks and typing patterns. Zuckerberg can also be heard clarifying that the collected content is 'stripped out' and not used for employee surveillance or performance reviews. Meta has reportedly laid off nearly 8,000 employees worldwide as part of a larger restructuring plan focused heavily on AI development. Teams across engineering and product divisions have been affected, while many workers are being shifted to new AI-focused projects. Also read: GitHub investigating cyberattack linked to malicious VS Code extension and leaked internal repositories The recording suggests that Meta may have shared only limited information inside the company because it did not want competitors to learn too much about its AI plans. Zuckerberg is said to have admitted that communication about the tracking system was not handled well, but he also said keeping some details secret was important for business reasons. The clip has since spread widely online and has become a sign of growing concern among tech workers. As companies put more money into AI, many employees are starting to worry that the same technology they are helping build today could one day take their jobs.

Meta to cut jobs, shift thousands of employees toward AI initiatives: Report

The restructuring has sparked internal employee backlash over layoffs and AI training practices. After speculations about layoffs, Meta is now reportedly moving ahead with a big restructuring exercise this week amid the growing push towards AI. As per the internal memo seen by Reuters, the Facebook parent aims to reduce its workforce globally while reassigning thousands of employees to new AI-focused teams and projects. The latest restructuring is said to begin on May 20, when around 10 per cent of the company's workforce can be impacted by layoffs. The move is said to be a result of the company's increasing investment in AI agents and automation technologies. Reports suggest deeper cuts may follow later this year as the company reshapes its internal structure around AI development. In the memo, Meta's Chief People Officer Janelle Gale reportedly informed employees that nearly 7,000 staff members would either be reassigned to AI-related initiatives or affected by bigger organisational changes. The company is also said to reduce several managerial positions as part of efforts to flatten reporting structures and create smaller, faster-moving teams. Also read: Elon Musk loses legal battle against Sam Altman and OpenAI, here is what he said The restructuring appears heavily tied to Meta's broader AI for Work strategy. Teams such as Applied AI Engineering AAI, Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA), and Central Analytics are reportedly being expanded to focus on building AI systems capable of handling tasks currently performed by human employees. Another internal unit called Enterprise Solutions is also said to be introduced soon. The reports also suggest that Meta has additionally frozen or eliminated around 6,000 open job positions during the process. According to company filings, Meta had close to 78,000 employees globally at the end of March. The changes have reportedly triggered internal backlash among employees. Many employees have criticised the company over its handling of layoffs and concerns around privacy-related AI tools. The report also suggests that over 1,000 employees have also signed a petition objecting to software designed to track mouse movements for AI training purposes.