Meta will cut 10% of workforce as company pushes deeper into AI

Meta It plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, approximately 8,000 employees, as it continues to increase its investments in artificial intelligence.

The cuts will begin May 20, and the company is abandoning plans to hire people for 6,000 open positions, according to a memo sent to employees Thursday. Bloomberg was first report About layoffs.

Meta’s latest round of cuts follows several smaller job reductions that the company said were necessary to improve efficiency as it focuses on generative AI, where OpenAI has lagged behind. Google and Anthropic.

CNBC reported in January that Meta laid off approximately 10% of employees working on metaverse-related projects. About 1,000 people in the company’s Reality Labs unit were let go at the time.

Another wave of layoffs began in March, affecting hundreds of employees across various units, including Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations and sales. Meta also said last month that it would shift to relying on various AI technologies from third-party vendors and contractors that have handled content moderation duties in the past.

Layoffs are on the rise in the tech sector as companies reckon with the boom in artificial intelligence. Microsoft confirmed Thursday that it will offer voluntary buyouts to some U.S. employees, a first for the 51-year-old software giant. About 7% of U.S. workers are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be identified because the number is not publicly available.

In January, Amazon announced plans to eliminate nearly 16,000 corporate jobs; This marked the second round of mass layoffs since last October.

Meta said: latest annual report In January, the global workforce fell to 78,865 employees as of December 31, down from 86,482 in late 2022, following a hiring surge in the tech industry in the wake of the Covid outbreak. The company said in a statement: 2021 annual report It announced that the global workforce reached 58,604 employees as of December 31, 2020.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s biggest effort is to strengthen his company’s position in the field of artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, Meta launched its first major AI model since the costly hire of Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang in June.

This week Meta announced to staff that it was using a new employee monitoring tool called the Model Talent Initiative, which aims to collect data from staff members using work computers. The data, which includes employee keystrokes and mouse clicks, is needed to train AI agents, a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

Meta is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, along with fellow tech giants Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.

Meta shares fell 2.4% on Thursday and are now flat for the year.

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