Meta layoffs: Mark Zuckerberg’s tech firm plans to cut nearly 16,000 jobs as AI costs mount, says report — what we know
Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company to offset costly AI infrastructure bets and prepare for greater productivity enabled by AI-powered workers, according to a report from Reuters.
However, sources speaking to Reuters said that no date has been set for these cuts and their magnitude has not been determined.
Senior executives recently communicated their plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told them to start planning how to step back, unnamed sources told Reuters.
“This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in response to questions about the plan.
The most important layoff at Meta
According to its latest data, Meta employs approximately 79,000 people as of December 31.
If Meta settles for the 20 percent figure, this layoff could affect around 16,000 employees and would be the most significant layoff since Mark Zuckerberg’s restructuring of his company in the “productive year” (late 2022 and early 2023).
Meta laid off 11,000 employees in November 2022; this accounted for approximately 13% of the workforce at the time. About four months later, it announced it would cut another 10,000 jobs.
Focus on productive AI
Last year, CEO Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to compete more strongly in the generative AI space. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years, to recruit top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.
The company announced that it plans to invest $600 billion to build data centers by 2028.
Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, a social networking platform built for artificial intelligence agents. Meta is also spending at least $2 billion to acquire Manus, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup.
Zuckerberg cited efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January that he was starting to see “projects that used to require large teams are now being accomplished by a single, highly skilled person.”
Meta’s planned AI investments follow a series of glitches with Llama 4 models last year; This includes criticism that the benchmarks it uses for older versions provide misleading results. The launch of the largest version of this model, called Behemoth, which was planned to be released in the summer, was abandoned.
Meta’s super intelligence team is working to reassert the company’s position by creating a new model called Avocado this year, but the performance of this model also fell short of expectations. Its publication was also postponed until later.
AI-led layoffs this year
Meta’s layoff plans reflect a broader pattern among major U.S. companies this year, especially in technology. Executives pointed to recent advances in artificial intelligence systems as a reason for the changes.
In January, Amazon confirmed it would cut 16,000 jobs, representing about 10% of its workforce.
Last month, fintech company Block laid off nearly half its staff, while CEO Jack Dorsey openly pointed to AI tools and their growing ability to help companies do more with smaller teams.
