Meta Layoffs: What Beyond Zuckerberg's AI Investments Triggered 8,000 Job Cuts
Meta began notifying employees across the globe on Wednesday morning, starting with the tech major's personnel in Singapore, who received the alert at 4 am local time.
- Republic Business
- 3 min read
Meta Layoffs: While continuing to increase spending on AI-centric infrastructure, and talent, Meta Platforms Inc has intiated sending alerts to thousands of employees that they’re being laid off, amid a restructuring plan aimed at reducing costs and bolstering efficiency.
The company began notifying employees across the globe on Wednesday morning, starting with the tech major's personnel in Singapore, who received the alert at 4 am local time.
Meanwhile, European and US-based staff are expected to receive the layoff alert early in their time zone as well, as per an internal memo.
Staff are being encouraged to work from home while the company cuts roughly 8,000 roles globally.
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This latest round of cuts is expected to hit Meta’s engineering and product teams in particular and additional layoffs could come later in the year, said people familiar with the company’s plans, who asked not to be named as the information is not public.
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On Monday, Meta informed staff that some 7,000 workers have also been reassigned to newly formed teams that are focused on AI initiatives, including products and agents. The company, which has committed well in excess of $100 billion to AI capital expenditures this year, had just under 80,000 employees at the end of March, ahead of the reassignments and layoffs.
“We’re now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership,” Meta’s Head of People Janelle Gale said in the memo, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News.
“We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding.”
Meta's Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s biggest priority, committing all resources to keeping pace with rivals like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI.
That’s led to changes to Meta’s workforce and the way it operates. The company has gone through waves of layoffs over recent years, as Zuckerberg has pushed for increased efficiency.
On the other hand, thousands of employees at the California-headquartered tech major have inked a petition, demanding that the company refrain from collecting their data from devices — which can be as granular as gathering keystrokes, mouse movements and screen content — in the effort to train AI.
While Meta considers the layoffs as a measure to “offset” the cost of some of its large-scale AI investments, analysts at Evercore projects the cuts will generate nearly $3 billion in savings, which is a small chunk of Meta’s projected capital expenditures this year, and is expected to hit $145 billion mark.