Meta plans to cut 10% of workforce, or 8,000 jobs, as it doubles down on AI

By Christine Ji

Meta's latest workforce reduction comes as the company aims to spend up to $135 billion on AI this year

Meta plans to cut around 8,000 jobs on May 20.

On Thursday, Meta Platforms confirmed recent reports of impending layoffs, revealing plans to shed 10% of its staff in May to boost artificial-intelligence efforts.

Meta (META) will lay off approximately 8,000 employees and eliminate another 6,000 open roles, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday and a Meta spokesperson confirmed. In an internal memo from Chief People Officer Janella Gale, the company said that the layoffs would help Meta improve efficiency and offset other investments it's making. Impacted employees will receive an email notice on May 20, the company said.

More: Meta reportedly eyes more layoffs, targeting 10% of staff

While AI wasn't explicitly mentioned in the memo, Meta's AI efforts have been a significant area of investment recently, with the company planning to spend up to $135 billion on capital expenditures in 2026.

Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company's AI lab headed by Alexandr Wang, launched its newest Muse Spark model earlier this month. The model powers Meta's AI assistant and specializes in multimodal perception, reasoning, health and agentic tasks.

As of the end of 2025, Meta employed nearly 79,000 people. The company already conducted layoffs earlier this year. In January, the company laid off 1,500 people in its Reality Labs division, aiming to divert more resources to its AI efforts.

The entire tech industry has been grappling with the implications of heavy AI investment and looking for ways to cut costs. Earlier on Thursday, Microsoft (MSFT) offered voluntary buyouts to U.S. employees for the first time in the company's history.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, an internal memo to employees said that Microsoft is "looking at where we can simplify to move faster and deliver the solutions our customers count on." The report said that around 7% of Microsoft's workforce is eligible for the buyouts.

As of June 2025, Microsoft employed 228,000 people worldwide, with 125,000 based in the U.S.

-Christine Ji

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04-23-26 1654ET