Meta () is expected to lay off around 10% of its workforce, equivalent to approximately 8,000 employees, in yet another restructuring move to free up resources and accelerate its investments in artificial intelligence. The cuts, scheduled to come into effect on May 20, also include the closure of around 6,000 vacancies that were open.
This would be the company’s biggest restructuring since the “Year of Efficiency”, a campaign initiated by Zuckerberg between 2022 and 2023, when Meta cut around 21 thousand jobs in response to the fall in shares and the slowdown in post-pandemic growth.
The measure reinforces the strategy led by Mark Zuckerberg of redirecting capital and talent to the AI race, at a time when technology giants are vying for prominence in foundational models, autonomous agents and computational infrastructure.
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In an internal memo sent to employees that Bloomberg had access to, Janelle Gale, Meta’s chief people officer, stated that the layoffs are part of an ongoing effort to operate the company more efficiently and offset investments in other strategic priorities.
Zuckerberg has been aggressively expanding contributions to developing models, products based on chatbots and hiring specialized engineers. Meta raised its Capex (Capital Expenditure or investments) projection for 2026 to between US$115 billion and US$135 billion, almost double the US$72 billion invested in 2025.
A relevant part of this amount is being allocated to the expansion of data centers and the infrastructure necessary to support AI loads at scale. Internally, the company has also encouraged employees to use AI agents in tasks such as programming.
According to the memo, impacted employees in the United States will receive a severance package with 18 months of health plan coverage via COBRA (Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), 16 weeks of base salary — plus two weeks per year of service —, in addition to support for relocation and support on migration issues. In other countries, packages vary depending on local legislation.
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