Meta plans large-scale layoffs amid rising AI costs - Reuters
Kyiv • UNN
The company plans to cut staff to offset investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure. Meta currently employs about 79,000 people.
Meta is planning large-scale staff reductions, which could affect 20% or more of the company, as Meta seeks to offset expensive investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure and prepare for the increased efficiency provided by AI-powered employees, Reuters reports, citing three sources familiar with the situation, writes UNN.
Details
The date of the cuts has not yet been determined, and their scale has not yet been decided, the sources said.
According to two sources, top executives recently informed other Meta leaders of the plans and instructed them to begin planning how to cut costs.
"These are speculative reports about theoretical approaches," Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in response to a question about the plan.
If Meta settles on a figure of 20%, the layoffs would be the most significant for the company since its restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023, which it called the "year of efficiency." According to the latest report, the company had nearly 79,000 employees as of December 31.
In November 2022, the company laid off 11,000 employees, representing about 13% of its then workforce. About four months later, it announced another 10,000 job cuts.
Over the past year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pushed Meta to compete more aggressively in generative AI. The company has offered huge compensation packages, some valued at hundreds of millions of dollars over four years, to attract top AI researchers to a new superintelligence development team.
The company has announced plans to invest $600 billion in building data centers by 2028. Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, a social network built for AI agents. Meta is also spending at least $2 billion to acquire Chinese AI startup Manus, Reuters previously reported.
Zuckerberg hinted at increased efficiency from these investments, saying in January that he was beginning to see how "projects that used to require large teams are now being done by one very talented individual."
Meta's plans reflect a broader trend among large American companies, especially in the tech sector this year. Executives point to recent improvements in AI systems as one reason for the changes.
In January, Amazon confirmed it would cut about 16,000 jobs, representing nearly 10% of its workforce. Last month, fintech company Block cut nearly half of its staff, with CEO Jack Dorsey directly pointing to artificial intelligence tools and their growing ability to help companies achieve more with smaller teams.
Meta's planned AI investments follow a series of setbacks with its Llama 4 models last year, including criticism for providing misleading results in benchmarks used for early versions. The company abandoned the release of the largest version of this model, Behemoth, which was supposed to be released in the summer.
The superintelligence development team worked to restore the company's position this year by creating a new model called Avocado, but the performance of this model also did not meet expectations, the publication writes.