Meta lays off 10% of its staff in the pursuit of greater efficiency

Meta attributes the cuts to the company’s continued efforts to become more efficient and «offset other investments.»

Meta announced to its employees this Thursday that it will lay off approximately 10% of its workforce starting May 20th. The cuts will affect around 8,000 of the 78,000 employees currently on the payroll of the American multinational.

The company also announced its intention to close the more than 6,000 vacant positions it initially planned to fill, according to an internal memo sent to staff yesterday by Janelle Gale, Meta’s Chief People Officer.

In this memo, which has since been leaked to some media outlets, Gale attributes the cuts to Meta’s ongoing efforts to «run the company more efficiently and offset other investments.»

Gale does not specify in the document what she means exactly by «other investments,» but it is widely known that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram is currently investing heavily in AI.

Earlier this year, the company announced, not surprisingly, that it would invest up to $135 billion in AI-focused initiatives.

In recent days, news has also surfaced that Meta will begin tracking its employees’ mouse movements and keystrokes on company computers to compile data for training AI models. And last week, the Financial Times also reported that Meta is working on developing an AI clone of Mark Zuckerberg.

AI is a priority for Meta, which is investing heavily in this technology.

Meta has confirmed reports of its latest staff reductions, a measure that, according to the company, is linked to the need to boost efficiency and offset «the heavy investment in AI.»

«This is not an easy decision and will involve letting go of people who have made significant contributions to Meta during their time here,» the company stated in a memo sent to its employees.

Meta has also committed to offering «generous compensation packages» to the affected employees, who will benefit from, among other things, 16 weeks of base salary and an additional two weeks for each year of service. Furthermore, the company will provide health insurance coverage to the affected employees for 18 months following their termination.

These announced layoffs are not the first at Meta in 2026. In January, the company already cut between 10% and 15% of its workforce in the Reality Labs division, closed several virtual reality game studios, and eliminated around 700 jobs across at least five different divisions during March.

In recent months, the company has also laid the groundwork for a new division called «Applied AI Engineering,» which is focused on developing AI agents.

The restructuring at Meta comes at a time that is paradoxically very strong financially for the company. In 2025, the company achieved revenues of $200 billion and profits of $60 billion.

The current round of layoffs at Meta is the largest undertaken by the company since the period between 2022 and 2023, when the company eliminated 21,000 jobs in response to the depreciation of its stock price and the massive hiring that occurred during the pandemic and ultimately proved unsustainable.

Source: www.marketingdirecto.com