Meta is cutting around 8,000 jobs as the company boosts its spending on AI, according to reports.
Roughly 10% of staff at the company, which runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will be let go next month, according to a memo sent to employees on Thursday. Meta also will not be filling thousands more open jobs it had been hiring for, it is understood.
Meta Job Cuts: The Details
This is believed to be the third round of layoffs affecting Meta staff in 2026.
The company is said to be spending $135B on AI this year, and increased spending has been cited as a key reason for the layoffs, according to BBC News.
The $135B figure is roughly equivalent to the amount it has spent on AI in the previous three years combined, said a person who viewed the memo – first reported by Bloomberg.
Earlier this year, we reported that Meta was laying off several hundred employees. A source at the time had said the cuts spanned Facebook, global operations, recruiting, sales, and Reality Labs – Meta’s virtual reality division. That was understood to be the second round.
The first round, in January, impacted more than 1,000 jobs.
Speculative reporting this year had indicated that Meta was planning to cut “20% or more” of its workforce.
Meta has also said it plans to invest $600B to build data centers by 2028.
Final Thoughts
The latest round of Meta cuts takes this year’s tech sector layoffs figure to 92,000, according to layoffs.fyi. We’re still only in April, but we seem to be on track to well surpass the 124,000 figure for 2025.
While AI is often cited as the reason behind layoffs, oftentimes that doesn’t tell the full story. In any case, it seems a harsh time to be a tech sector worker right now – whether AI is the culprit or not.
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