Meta is cutting about 8,000 workers, and more layoffs are coming

Roughly 8,000 employees — close to 10% of Meta $META's global headcount — are slated to lose their jobs starting May 20 in what sources described to Reuters as the first of several planned rounds of cuts. Further reductions are expected later in the year, though sources say no decisions on dates or scope have been locked in for those subsequent rounds. How quickly those later cuts proceed will depend in part on how AI capabilities evolve, sources told Reuters.

The company's most recent annual filing put its total headcount at just under 79,000 as of the end of last year. Among the units facing cuts in May are Reality Labs, recruiting, sales, global operations, and the Facebook social division. State-required WARN Act notices filed in California list 124 job eliminations at Meta's Burlingame location and 74 at its Sunnyvale campus, with effective dates of May 22 and May 29 respectively, according to The Next Web.

The restructuring is tied to a sharp increase in AI investment. To fund its AI buildout — encompassing data centers, GPUs, and the infrastructure underlying its models — Meta has projected 2026 capital spending of between $115 billion and $135 billion, a figure that would represent roughly twice what it disbursed in 2025. Depreciation and operating costs tied to the data center expansion will increasingly pressure earnings, CFO Susan Li cautioned, describing the outlook as a "significant acceleration in infrastructure expense growth."

The company shed 700 positions spanning at least five divisions in March and has since overhauled its Reality Labs organizational structure. Engineers drawn from across Meta's business units have been moved into an Applied AI Engineering division, whose mandate centers on building agents capable of autonomous coding and multi-step task execution. Reuters also reported that a portion of employees will be reassigned to Meta Small Business, a division the company established last month.

Earlier this year, Meta cut between 10% and 15% of its Reality Labs workforce in January and shut down several VR game studios. The May round marks a shift from those targeted reductions to a companywide restructuring. Meta declined to comment on the timing or scope of the planned cuts.

The cuts come despite a strong financial position. Despite its heavy spending on artificial intelligence, Reuters notes that Meta closed out last year with revenue exceeding $200 billion and net profit of $60 billion. The closest precedent for the current cuts is the 2022-2023 period when Zuckerberg branded his cost-cutting campaign the "Year of Efficiency" and erased roughly 21,000 positions — a response to a cratering stock price and hiring projections rooted in pandemic-era demand that never materialized.

When Reuters revealed last month that internal discussions had touched on reductions of 20% or beyond, a company spokesperson pushed back, telling The Next Web the coverage amounted to "speculative reporting about theoretical approaches."