Meta Begins 8,000-Person Layoff Wave as Zuckerberg Shifts Tone on Cuts

Meta is set to begin its latest round of workforce reductions Wednesday, with approximately 8,000 employees — roughly 10% of the company — expected to lose their jobs, underscoring the accelerating role of artificial intelligence in reshaping headcount decisions across the technology sector.

The cuts were outlined in an internal memo distributed in April. Alongside the planned terminations, the company also scrapped plans to fill 6,000 open roles, according to that memo.

The current round follows earlier reductions this year: roughly 1,000 employees in Meta's Reality Labs unit were let go in January, and hundreds more were cut in March, along with a shift away from third-party vendors and contractors handling content moderation.

Further reductions are expected, including a potential round of layoffs in August and another later in the year, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.

The framing from the top is notably different from previous cycles. When Zuckerberg announced the elimination of 11,000 jobs in late 2022 — cuts that eventually grew to 21,000 — he was openly apologetic, telling employees in a November message: "I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that." This time, company communications described the reductions as "all part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making." There was no apology.

Those investments are substantial. Meta lifted its 2026 capital expenditure guidance last month by as much as $10 billion, bringing the top end of that range to $145 billion — almost entirely driven by artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Chief Financial Officer Susan Li acknowledged uncertainty about the company's future footprint during the first-quarter earnings call, saying executives "don't really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future." On AI spending, Li added that the company has "continued to underestimate our compute needs even as we have been ramping capacity significantly."

Inside the company, current and former employees — speaking anonymously to discuss internal matters — describe a growing sense of dread, with long-tenured staffers questioning Meta's AI strategy under AI chief Alexandr Wang and weighing whether to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Data from Blind, an anonymous professional network that verifies users through work email addresses, reflects the internal strain. Meta's overall employee rating on the platform has dropped 25% from a peak in the second quarter of 2024 to the current period, with its culture rating down 39%. In every category except compensation, Meta underperforms rivals Amazon, Google, and Netflix, the Blind data shows.

Meta's stock has not been immune. Shares are down approximately 7% so far this year and nearly 5% over the past 12 months, trailing all of its megacap peers except Microsoft.

The broader industry context amplifies the pressure. So far in 2026, nearly 110,000 layoffs have been recorded at 137 technology companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, following approximately 125,000 cuts across all of 2025. At the current pace, the total could approach the 2023 peak, when more than 260,000 tech workers were laid off.

Cisco became the latest company to frame workforce cuts through an AI lens last week, announcing the elimination of fewer than 4,000 jobs alongside quarterly earnings. "The companies that will win in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest," CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a blog post. Cisco shares rose more than 13% on Thursday — their best single-day gain since 2011 — after the company reported better-than-expected results and raised its AI infrastructure guidance.

Umesh Ramakrishnan, chief strategy officer at executive search firm Kingsley Gate, said the dynamic is uncomfortable for workers but welcomed by investors. "Now the world understands that jobs are being replaced by machines, and if you're not doing that, shareholders are getting upset," he said.

With more rounds expected before year-end and its AI strategy still taking shape, Meta faces simultaneous pressure from investors skeptical of its long-term direction and employees uncertain about their place in the company's increasingly automated future.

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