Meta is laying off around 8,000 employees and cutting approximately 6,000 open positions, with the changes taking effect on May 20. These reductions amount to about 10% of Meta’s global workforce of 78,865 employees. The layoffs were announced in an internal memo from Meta’s head of HR, Janelle Gale, and confirmed by a company spokesperson.
Gale stated in the memo that the move is part of an effort to run the company more efficiently and to offset other investments. The memo was first reported by Bloomberg.
Why Meta Is Making These Cuts
Meta expects its capital spending in 2026 to be between $115 billion and $135 billion, up from $72.2 billion in 2025. The increase is mainly due to investments in Meta Superintelligence Labs and core business infrastructure. The layoffs are presented as a way to improve efficiency and free up resources for that spending without considerably increasing total costs.
For the fourth quarter of 2025, Meta reported a record quarterly revenue of $59.89 billion and a net income of $22.77 billion. The company also projects revenue for the first quarter of 2026 to be between $53.5 billion and $56.5 billion, which is above previous Wall Street estimates. Full financial results for the first quarter of 2026 are scheduled to be released on April 29.
How These Layoffs Fit Into Meta’s Recent History and AI Push
The layoffs on May 20 are Meta’s largest since March 2023, when the company cut 10,000 jobs following an earlier reduction of 11,000 staff in November 2022. Along with clearing open positions, the current layoffs total about 14,000 roles removed from Meta’s workforce and hiring plans.
These layoffs come at the same time as Meta introduces its Model Capability Initiative, an employee computer monitoring program announced this week to gather interaction data for AI training. Additionally, the company has launched Muse Spark, its first in-house AI model developed by Superintelligence Labs.
