Meta is gearing up for possible layoffs as it pours billions into AI, two senior employees familiar with the matter told Business Insider.
The sources said that some managers have been asked to prepare cost-cutting plans but were not told their scope or timing.
Reuters, which first reported about the potential layoffs on Friday, said that up to 20% of Meta employees could be let go. As of the end of 2025, Meta employed nearly 79,000 people, so a potential cut of 20% would mean roughly 16,000 jobs eliminated. That would be Meta’s most significant reduction since 2022, when it cut 11,000 jobs, and 2023, when it cut another 10,000. In January, Meta laid off 1,500 people in its Reality Labs division.
One person familiar with the company’s thinking told Business Insider the cuts could come as soon as a month.
“This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Business Insider.
If Meta moves forward with these cuts, it would signal a broader shift in the tech industry, as companies pour massive amounts of capital into AI infrastructure and talent while trimming the workforces that once powered their growth during the pandemic.
In recent weeks, Atlassian announced plans to cut roughly 1,600 employees, or 10% of its staff, tying the move to AI and a push for efficiency. Block has also slashed jobs, with CEO Jack Dorsey saying new AI tools allow companies to operate with smaller teams and more efficiency. These cuts signal a new strategy in Silicon Valley: as AI becomes more capable, the biggest technology companies are betting they can build faster and cheaper with fewer people.
Meta has said it plans to invest roughly $600 billion to build out data centers by 2028. The company has also offered pay packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years to lure top AI researchers to its new superintelligence team led by former Scale AI CEO Alexnadr Wang. Financing those bets, while satisfying Wall Street, means finding savings elsewhere. Head count is the most obvious lever.
On Meta’s January earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors the company is already “elevating individual contributors and flattening teams.” He added that he’s seeing “projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single, very talented person.” Last week, Meta created a brand-new AI engineering organization, where teams will have manager-to-employee ratios of up to 1:50.
Given Meta’s size, a 20% reduction at Meta would dwarf many of its Big Tech peercuts in absolute terms, wiping out more jobs than the entire head count of many midsize tech companies.
Meta’s urgency around AI comes after a difficult stretch for its in-house model efforts. The company faced criticism that early versions of its Llama 4 models produced misleading benchmark results, and it ultimately shelved the largest version of that model, called Behemoth, which had been due out last summer.
Its Superintelligence team has since been working on a new model called Avocado and Mango, which have reportedly fallen short of internal expectations and been delayed until May.
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