Meta said on Thursday that it will lay off around 10% of its workforce, which works out to nearly 8,000 employees. The company is also shutting down about 6,000 open positions that had not yet been filled. According to Meta, the job cuts will begin on May 20. Janelle Gale, Meta’s chief people officer, shared the news in a memo first published by Bloomberg.
“We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” Gale wrote.
Meta to cut 8,000 jobs as AI push grows
This is Meta’s latest round of layoffs after several smaller cuts in recent months. The company has said these steps are needed to improve efficiency while putting more focus on generative AI. The Mark Zuckerberg led tech giant has been trying to catch up in the AI race, where rivals like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic have moved ahead.
For months, Meta has been spending heavily to build its AI business. The company spent $72.2 billion in 2025 on capital expenditures. That includes data centres and other major AI-related infrastructure. In its January earnings report, company said spending could reach at least $115 billion in 2026.
The company has also been spending big to hire talent for its superintelligence lab. It has also bought popular AI startups such as Moltbook and Manus as it tries to keep pace with OpenAI and other rivals.
What affected workers will get
Meta said employees in the United States who lose their jobs will receive 16 weeks of base pay. They will also get an extra two weeks of pay for every year they worked at the company. The company added that packages for workers outside the US will be similar.
Shares fall, layoffs spread across tech
Meta shares fell 2.4% on Thursday. The stock is now roughly flat for the year. Moreover, Meta is set to report its first-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Other major tech companies reporting around the same time include Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.
Earlier layoffs hit Reality Labs and other teams
CNBC reported in January that Meta cut around 10% of employees working on metaverse-related projects. Around 1,000 workers in the company’s Reality Labs division lost their jobs during that round.
Another wave of layoffs started in March. Hundreds of employees across different teams were affected, including workers in Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations and sales.
Last month, Meta also said it would move away from third-party vendors and contractors who had long handled content moderation work. Instead, the company said it would operate more on different AI tools.
Zuckerberg had already hinted at changes
The layoffs come as no shock, for months Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been doubling down on his claims that AI could reshape the company’s workforce. During Meta’s January earnings call, he described 2026 as “the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work.”
He also said, “We’re starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.” This week, Meta told staff it is using a new employee tracking system called the Model Capability Initiative.
The tool is meant to collect data from staff using their work computers. According to a company spokesperson, that data includes keystrokes and mouse clicks, and is needed to train AI agents.