‘Sweeping Layoffs’ at Meta Could Impact 16,000 Employees
Meta is planning layoffs which could affect “20% or more” of the company, according to reports.
Three people familiar with the matter told Reuters about the alleged plans, as Meta tries to make up for the cost of expensive AI infrastructure bets and prepare for supposed efficiency boosts brought about by artificial intelligence tools.
Most Severe Since “Year of Efficiency”?
As of December 31, Meta employed nearly 79,000 people, according to its latest filing. That means that, if the 20% figure comes to fruition, almost 16,000 people’s jobs are at risk.
It would be the most significant layoffs for the company since its restructuring towards the end of the Covid pandemic in late 2022 and early 2023, dubbed the “Year of Efficiency”, which saw around 11,000 staff – around 13% of the workforce – laid off. Another 10,000 cuts were revealed around four months later.
The sources said of the allegedly forthcoming cuts that no official date has been set, and the magnitude of the layoffs is not yet known.
A Meta spokesperson told SF Ben: “This is a speculative report about theoretical approaches.”
Two of the sources claimed that executives at Meta recently signaled plans to other senior leaders, telling them to prepare.
Meta has been offering enormous pay packages in the hundreds of millions of dollars to get top AI researchers on board for a new superintelligence team.
The company has revealed plans to invest $600B in data centers by 2028, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apparently been pushing for a stronger position in the world of generative AI.
If the apparent plans for layoffs at the company go ahead, they would be the latest in quite a brutal series of setbacks for tech workers in 2026.
In January, 16,000 jobs were axed at Amazon, meaning cuts of almost 10% of its workforce.
According to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry, 38,645 employees have been laid off from 60 companies so far this year.
In February, we reported that Salesforce had laid off around 1,000 roles, understood to have been in marketing, product management, and data analytics departments, along with the Agentforce AI and Heroku teams.
Final Thoughts
Tech companies are seemingly spending unprecedented amounts while trying to win the AI race. In a previous age, this might have been great news for workers, but the reverse of this seems to be the case for now, with advancements in artificial intelligence convincing many businesses that they no longer need as many people to achieve what they want to.
Whether there is a harsh awakening for tech businesses who realize that cutting huge swathes of staff is a mistake, or if these gambles pay off in the end, remains to be seen.
