Meta Platforms is preparing for its biggest round of job cuts since 2022, with plans that could see the company shed 20% or more of its workforce. That would amount to roughly 16,000 roles based on the nearly 79,000 employees Meta reported at the end of December.
Reuters broke the story Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the matter. No date has been set and the final number hasn’t been locked in. A Meta spokesperson called the reporting “speculative” and about “theoretical approaches.”
The planned cuts are tied to Meta’s massive bet on artificial intelligence. The company has committed to spending $600 billion building out data centers through 2028 — a number that requires it to find savings elsewhere.
Zuckerberg has made it clear which direction he’s heading. In January, he said he was already seeing “projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.” That’s the efficiency story Meta is telling.
Top executives have already told senior leaders to start thinking about how to pare back their teams, two sources told Reuters. It’s early stages, but the direction is set.
The layoffs aren’t happening in isolation. Meta has been spending heavily to compete in generative AI. It acquired Moltbook, a social platform built for AI agents, earlier this week. It’s also paying at least $2 billion for Chinese AI startup Manus.
To pull in top AI talent, Meta has offered pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years to researchers joining its new superintelligence team.
The irony is that the same AI investments driving those hires may now be the reason others lose their jobs. The cost of building AI infrastructure is forcing the company to run leaner everywhere else.
If the 20% figure holds, this would be Meta’s deepest cut since its “Year of Efficiency” restructuring. That period saw 11,000 jobs go in November 2022, followed by another 10,000 in early 2023.
Meta isn’t alone in this pattern. Amazon confirmed 16,000 job cuts earlier this year. Block slashed nearly half its staff, with CEO Jack Dorsey directly crediting AI tools as the reason fewer people are needed.
Despite all the spending, Meta’s AI products have hit some bumps. Its Llama 4 models drew criticism last year for producing misleading results on early benchmarks. The largest version of that model, called Behemoth, was quietly shelved before its planned summer release.
The superintelligence team is now working on a new model called Avocado, which is meant to restore confidence in Meta’s AI capabilities. But that model has also reportedly fallen short of internal expectations so far.
Analysts at Bernstein have flagged a “trough of disillusionment” around consumer AI adoption — a useful frame for where Meta’s products currently sit.
META stock fell 3.83% on the news during the session, though it ticked slightly higher in after-hours trading as investors processed what leaner headcount might mean for margins.
The most recent datapoint: Meta’s December filing listed 78,900 employees. A 20% cut would bring that number to around 63,000.
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