Meta Platforms is weighing a sweeping new round of job cuts that could eliminate up to 20 percent of its global workforce, or roughly 16,000 positions, according to three people familiar with internal discussions who spoke to Reuters. If carried out at that scale, the reduction would be the largest in the company’s history and would surpass the roughly 21,000 jobs Meta cut during its 2022 and 2023 “year of efficiency” restructuring.
The planned layoffs are driven by the enormous capital requirements of Meta’s artificial intelligence buildout. The company has committed to spending at least $600 billion on U.S. data centers and related infrastructure by 2028, and its capital expenditure budget for 2026 alone is projected to land between $40 billion and $50 billion. Senior executives have reportedly been instructed to begin planning for significant personnel reductions to help offset those costs.
AI Tools Are Replacing Entire Teams at Meta
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has signaled internally that advances in AI could lead to substantial efficiency gains across the organization. In recent communications, he noted that projects once requiring large teams are increasingly being completed by a single highly skilled individual using AI tools. That philosophy appears to be shaping the scope of the planned cuts.
Teams involved in routine administrative and operational tasks are reportedly the most vulnerable, along with layers of middle management that Zuckerberg has targeted for removal to speed up decision-making. The company had approximately 79,000 employees as of December 31, according to its most recent regulatory filing.
Meta’s AI Strategy Has Hit Turbulence
The workforce reduction comes at a turbulent moment for Meta’s AI ambitions. The company recently delayed the release of its next flagship AI model, code-named Avocado, after internal tests showed it trailing newer models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Reports have also surfaced that Meta’s leadership discussed temporarily licensing Google’s Gemini model while Avocado is improved.
Meta hired Alexandr Wang and assembled an AI “super team” nine months ago, backed by $14.3 billion in spending. But the gap between Meta’s models and the competition has raised questions about whether the company’s strategy of building AI in-house can deliver results fast enough to justify the investment.
A Pattern Across Big Tech
Meta is not alone in cutting headcount to fund AI. Atlassian announced this week that it would lay off 1,600 employees to self-fund AI and enterprise sales expansion. Oracle is planning to cut up to 30,000 jobs to finance its $50 billion AI data center buildout. The pattern suggests a structural shift in how large technology companies allocate resources, moving spending from human labor toward compute infrastructure and AI development.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone characterized the layoff reports as “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,” adding that no final decision has been made about the scale or timing of any cuts. But the internal planning signals that significant reductions are under active consideration at the highest levels of the company.
For founders and startup operators, the potential flood of 16,000 experienced tech workers onto the job market could ease a talent shortage that has constrained hiring at smaller companies for years. At the same time, Meta’s willingness to slash headcount to fund AI infrastructure underscores the scale of investment that major platforms now consider necessary to compete, a benchmark that shapes the expectations of investors and customers across the technology industry.
