Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves the Federal Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles after defending the company in a landmark social media addiction trial in Los Angeles, United States, on February 19, 2026.
Jon Putman | Anadolu | Getty Images
Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, as it continues ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.
The cuts will begin on May 20, and the company s scrapping plans to hire people for 6,000 open roles, according to a Thursday memo to employees. Bloomberg was first to report on the layoffs.
Meta’s latest round of cuts follows several smaller job reductions that the company said was necessary to to improve efficiency while focusing its efforts on generative AI, where it’s lagged OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.
CNBC reported in January that Meta fired roughly 10% of employees who were working on metaverse-related projects. Roughly 1,000 people in the company’s Reality Labs unit were let go at that time.
Another round of layoffs commenced in March and affected hundreds of employees working in a variety of units, including Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations and sales. Meta also said last month that it would shift away from third-party vendors and contractors, which have historically handled content moderation tasks, in favor of relying on various AI technologies.
Earlier this week, Meta revealed to staff that it’s using a new employee tracking tool called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), intended to capture data from staff members using their 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 about flat for the year.
WATCH: Despite the energy shock, AI arms race set to keep capex spending elevated.
