Is Meta Planning to Lay Off 20% of its Workforce?
A report from Reuters has suggested that Meta may be planning layoffs that could impact 20% of its employees.
These cuts – which Reuters says were reported to it by three anonymous sources “familiar with the matter” – would help the company offset its AI infrastructure spend and reduce its workforce as AI takes on more routine tasks.
While Reuters says no date has been set for these cuts, the sources shared that senior leaders at Meta are being asked to plan where they wish to make cuts.
Andy Stone, spokesperson for Meta, told Reuters this was “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.”
Meta’s bet on AI
In January 2026, Meta announced Meta Compute, a new division dedicated to building and managing AI infrastructure.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, shared that the company “is planning to build tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts more over time.”
This follows Mark sharing at a White House dinner in 2025 that Meta plans to invest “at least US$600bn” in US infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, according to Reuters – including hundreds of billions of dollars to begin construction on several data centres.
Meta has forecasted that this will lead to increased costs, warning investors in October that capex costs for 2026 would be notably larger than in 2025.
The company predicted in its 2025 earnings report that this spend will range between US$115bn and US$135bn, which could be almost double its 2025 capex of US$72.2bn.
On an earnings call, Mark said of this strategy: “As we plan for the future, we will continue to invest very significantly in infrastructure to train leading models and deliver personal superintelligence to billions of people and businesses around the world.”
Revamping performance culture
Meta made changes to the way it measures performance in early 2026, according to an internal memo seen by Business Insider.
The new system – which rewards employees based on their contribution to business outcomes – has four ratings, ranging from outstanding to not meeting expectations.
In 2025, the company pledged that it would cut 5% of its global workforce, which was decided on the basis of poor performance.
The company previously cut 11,000 roles in 2022, and 10,000 in 2023 – which was dubbed the company’s ‘Year of Efficiency’ by Mark.
With a current workforce of over 75,000 employees as of mid-2025, these cuts could impact around 15,000 people globally.
Job cuts and AI washing
As more companies announce AI-based layoffs, critics are suggesting that many of these cuts may be due to ‘AI washing.’
At the AI Impact Summit in February, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared that he believes many businesses are unfairly blaming AI for workforce cuts. He told attendees: “I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs”.
Sam continued to say that while he did anticipate AI leading to some job displacement, “we’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution.”
