Meta cuts 8,000 jobs in global layoffs, shifts focus to AI

Meta has initiated a wave of layoffs affecting 10 percent of its global workforce, approximately 8,000 employees, the company announced Wednesday.

The cuts, which began at 4 a.m. local time for affected workers, are planned to occur in three waves, according to Reuters.

Employees impacted in the first round include those on Meta’s integrity team, responsible for removing malicious content and hate speech, as well as cybersecurity and content design divisions, Business Insider reported.

U.S. workers will receive 16 weeks of severance pay plus an additional two weeks for each year of service, Meta representatives confirmed to Al Jazeera.

In addition to the layoffs, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram canceled plans to hire 6,000 people and will shift 7,000 employees into artificial intelligence (AI) workflow-related roles.

The cuts follow reports of declining morale at the Mark Zuckerberg-led company, driven partly by a new AI tracking program that uses employee data to train Meta’s AI models, according to the Wall Street Journal.

More than 1,500 workers signed a petition demanding the company not collect their data, the paper reported.

“The move is part of a series of issues affecting morale,” with one unnamed policy employee telling Wired that morale is low because the U.S. workforce is “being used to train the AI models that will replace them.”

Other concerns include decreased spending on workers, such as reduced annual raises and a nearly $30,000 decline in median total compensation.

Zuckerberg, the world’s sixth-richest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has continued investing heavily in business, particularly AI development including the Meta Superintelligence initiative.

Capital expenditures are forecast to reach $125 billion to $145 billion for the year, more than double since 2025.

“The way to think about the investment is that we’re making a bet [on] the individual things that people care about, and that people are going to be more important in the future,” Zuckerberg said in an April earnings call.

A recent Goldman Sachs survey found AI-driven layoffs equate to more than 16,000 payroll cuts per month this year, as tech giant Cisco announced it is cutting about 4,000 workers.

Meta shares were up 0.1 percent in midday trading.