Meta plans to cut 10 percent of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 employees, and close another 6,000 open roles, according to an internal memo Thursday, as the company spends heavily on artificial intelligence development.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025. Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, said he expects much of the work being done in the tech industry to eventually be overtaken by AI-powered systems, including coding assistants that help engineers write software.
“We’re doing this as part of our ongoing efforts to run the company more efficiently and to offset other investments we’re making,” Janelle Gale, chief executive officer of Meta, said in a memo to employees. “It’s not an easy compromise and it will mean letting go of people who have made a meaningful contribution to the Met during their time here.”
A spokesperson for Meta confirmed the cuts and declined further comment.
Mr Zuckerberg is reorganizing his company around AI products amid a fierce race for leadership in the technology against rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Meta has made progress in fits and starts, but has lagged behind competitors in developing basic AI models.
To catch up, Mr. Zuckerberg has spent more than $70 billion on AI investments, such as data centers, semiconductors and real estate, so that Meta can do the expensive work of developing cutting-edge AI. In a call with investors in January, he said the company expects to spend $115 billion to $135 billion this year, nearly double the $72 billion it earmarked for AI development last year.
Mr. Zuckerberg described the development of AI-based social media products that are a kind of “personal superintelligence” that he hopes people will incorporate into their daily lives.
“At Meta, we have the resources to build the necessary large-scale infrastructure and the ability to deliver new technologies to billions of people,” he said in the video. published July on his Facebook page.
He defended Meta’s heavy spending on technology. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the company’s revenue rose 24 percent from a year earlier, which Mr. Zuckerberg attributed to investments in AI that he said improved ad targeting and recommendations of videos and other posts to users.
This is a developing story. Watch for updates.
