![\"Meta](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775477523_705_1x1_spacer.png\" "\\"Meta")
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMeta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI Meta\u2019s top priority, but the company\u2019s heavy spending plans and workforce changes have raised concerns among employees and investors.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t| Photo Credit:
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCarlos Barria\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Meta Platforms Inc. is alerting thousands of employees that they\u2019re being laid off, part of a restructuring aimed at improving efficiency and reducing costs while investing heavily in artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
The company began notifying workers around the world Wednesday morning, starting with employees in Asian hub Singapore, who got the note at 4 a.m. local time. European and US-based staff are expected to receive word early in their time zone as well, according to an internal memo.<\/p>\n
Around 8,000 roles expected to be cut globally<\/p>\n
Staff are being encouraged to work from home while the company cuts roughly 8,000 roles globally. This latest round of cuts is expected to hit Meta\u2019s engineering and product teams in particular and additional layoffs could come later in the year, said people familiar with the company\u2019s plans, who asked not to be named as the information is not public.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 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,\u201d Meta\u2019s Head of People Janelle Gale said in the memo, which was reviewed by Bloomberg News. \u201cWe believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuckerberg doubles down on AI strategy<\/p>\n
Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company\u2019s top priority, committing all resources to keeping pace with rivals like Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google and OpenAI. That\u2019s led to changes to Meta\u2019s workforce and the way it operates. The company has gone through waves of layoffs over recent years, as Zuckerberg has pushed for increased efficiency. He has encouraged engineers to use AI agents to assist with coding and other tasks, outlined plans to track employees\u2019 devices to improve the technology, and spent time coding his own AI-powered assistant to handle some of his CEO duties, like soliciting employee feedback.<\/p>\n
Employees raise concerns over surveillance and morale<\/p>\n
These changes have left Meta employees both frustrated and anxious. More than a thousand have signed a petition addressed to Zuckerberg and other leaders of the company demanding that it refrain from collecting their data from devices \u2014 which can be as granular as gathering keystrokes, mouse movements and screen content \u2014 in the effort to train AI. Others have taken to social media to post about how the threat of layoffs has impacted their work and morale.<\/p>\n
Investor concerns grow over massive AI spending<\/p>\n
Meta\u2019s aggressive spending on AI has caused concern among investors, who worry that the company\u2019s investment may not ultimately pay off. While Meta has framed the layoffs as an opportunity to \u201coffset\u201d the cost of some of its major AI investments, analysts at Evercore estimate the cuts will generate only about $3 billion in savings.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just a small portion of Meta\u2019s projected capital expenditures this year, which could hit $145 billion, and the additional hundreds of billions that the company anticipates spending on AI infrastructure before the end of the decade.<\/p>\n