Inside Meta's harsh new AI reality as layoffs begin to hit Zuckerberg's company this week
Meta has confirmed that the company's plan to slash one in 10 jobs will begin this week as CEO Mark Zuckerberg pours billions into artificial intelligence in a bid to reshape the company around the fast-moving technology.Around 11,000 employees are expected to be impacted, though some reports have floated that the cull could eventually grow to as many as 21,000 positions. Meta confirmed to CNBC that the layoffs will begin on Wednesday.The cuts were first reported in April, when an internal memo revealed the company planned to reduce its workforce by 10 percent.Zuckerberg previously admitted Meta over-hired during the COVID-19 pandemic as the company now accelerates spending on AI and data center construction. Meta is expected to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures in 2026.'I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,' Zuckerberg told staff in a November memo during a period when the company's stock was tumbling.Meta is also abandoning plans to hire for roughly 6,000 currently open roles, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg.The move marks one of the biggest shake-ups at Meta since its aggressive 'year of efficiency' campaign in 2022 and 2023, when the tech giant cut 21,000 jobs. Meta has confirmed that the company's plan to slash one in 10 jobs will begin on Wednesday Around 11,000 employees are expected to be impacted, though some reports have floated that the cull could eventually grow to as many as 21,000 positions Read More Meta axes 8,000 jobs as Zuckerberg doubles down on AI - and the white-collar bloodbath gathers pace The latest downsizing follows about 1,000 layoffs in January inside Meta's Reality Labs division, along with additional cuts in March that affected hundreds more employees. The company has also moved away from using third-party vendors and contractors for content moderation work.The contrast is stark: during the earlier layoffs, Meta was struggling financially. Now, the company is highly profitable, generating more than $60 billion in profit last year on over $200 billion in revenue - yet it is still shrinking its workforce.Instead, Zuckerberg is funneling hundreds of billions into artificial intelligence infrastructure.Meta currently operates 31 data centers worldwide, housing the server capacity needed to process and store the billions of messages, posts, and images shared every second across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.In June 2025, the company invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a software company that was poached by Meta along with its CEO Alexandr Wang.Meta revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings report in January that it expects to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion on AI this year.When combined with planned investments from Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, total AI spending by the four tech giants could reach around $700 billion. Meta has 31 data centers across the globe, with server space to process and store the billions of messages, posts, and images circulated on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp every single second of the dayMeta is not alone in linking artificial intelligence to layoffs.Cloudflare had employees meet a similar fate when over 1,000 were laid off following a memo from co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn that warned staff that AI had completely transformed how the company operates, despite the company boasting about its impressive first-quarter revenue of $639.8 million. Oracle, the software and cloud computing powerhouse founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, started cutting staff in April in what insiders described as a 'significant reduction in force.'Workers said they were informed via early morning emails before quickly losing access to company systems. Leading powerhouse tech companies Amazon and Block have all announced job cuts while pointing in some way to AI, automation or efforts to make workers more productive.
