Meta to cut 8,000 jobs, scrap 6,000 open roles for AI

Meta will cut about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its global workforce, and eliminate 6,000 open roles, the company announced in an internal memo from Chief People Officer Janelle Gale. The reductions will affect teams across the company.

Gale wrote the reductions are intended to help Meta run more efficiently and to offset growing AI spending. “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,” the memo reads. She added the layoffs will involve employees who have made meaningful contributions during their time at the company.

Affected U.S. employees will be notified on May 20. Severance packages will include 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year of service. The memo noted the company will offer career transition services in addition to severance; timing for non-U.S. notifications was not specified.

Meta employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025. The planned cuts reduce headcount by about one in ten and close thousands of open positions. The company confirmed the changes align with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to center the business more heavily on artificial intelligence; he has predicted advanced AI systems will take over many tasks now performed by engineers and other technical staff.

Meta is projecting capital expenditures of as much as $135 billion for the year, nearly double the prior year’s spending, largely for AI infrastructure. The company reported a 24% revenue increase in the fourth quarter of 2025, which it attributed in part to AI-enhanced advertising tools. Meta’s stock fell more than 2% on the day of the announcement, finishing near $659 per share.

Other technology companies have also reduced staff while expanding AI programs. Microsoft is offering buyouts to roughly 7% of its workforce, and Block eliminated about 40% of its employees earlier this year. Both companies pointed to efficiency gains linked to AI.

The memo noted Meta will remove 6,000 open roles that had not been filled. Executives framed the combination of layoffs and hiring reductions as a way to reallocate resources for long-term AI research, development and the data center capacity needed to support larger models and agent-style tools. The company did not provide a breakdown of which teams or regions would see the deepest reductions.