{"id":346344,"date":"2026-03-14T18:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T18:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/346344\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T18:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T18:39:07","slug":"meta-planning-sweeping-lay-offs-as-ai-costs-mount-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/346344\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta \u2018planning sweeping lay-offs\u2019 as AI costs mount \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta<\/a> is planning sweeping lay-offs that \u200ccould affect 20 per cent or more of the company, three sources told Reuters. <\/p>\n

The reported move comes as the Facebook<\/a> and Instagram<\/a> parent seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) infrastructure bets and prepare for \u200bgreater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.<\/p>\n

No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalised, the people said.<\/p>\n

Top executives have recently signalled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told them to begin planning how to pare back, two of the sources said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,\u201d Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in response to questions about the plan.<\/p>\n

Following recent cuts at Meta Ireland, the company brought its headcount to fewer than 1,800<\/a> in 2024, down from over 2,000 the previous year. <\/p>\n

If \u2060Meta settles on the 20 per cent figure, the lay-offs will be the company\u2019s most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and \u200cearly \u200c2023 \u200bthat it dubbed the \u201cyear of efficiency\u201d. It employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31st, according to its latest filing.<\/p>\n

The company laid off 11,000 staffers in November 2022, or about 13 per cent of its workforce \u2060at the time. Around four months later, it announced \u200bit was cutting another 10,000 jobs.<\/p>\n

Over \u200bthe last year, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> has been pushing Meta to compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, \u200csome worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four \u200byears, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.<\/p>\n

The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion (\u20ac523 billion) to build \u2060data centres by 2028. Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, \u2060a social networking platform built \u200bfor AI agents. Meta is also spending at least $2 billion to buy Chinese AI start-up Manus, Reuters has reported.<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg has alluded to efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January he was starting to see \u201cprojects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s plans reflect a broader pattern among big US companies, particularly in tech, this year. Executives have pointed to recent improvements in AI systems as one reason for the changes.<\/p>\n

In January, Amazon confirmed it would cut some 16,000 jobs, amounting to nearly 10 per cent of its workforce. Last month, the fintech company Block chopped nearly \u200chalf of its staff, with chief executive Jack Dorsey explicitly pointing to AI tools and their growing capability to help companies do more with smaller teams.<\/p>\n

Meta\u2019s planned AI investments follow a series of setbacks with its Llama 4 models last year, including criticism that \u200cit provided misleading results on the benchmarks it used for early versions. It abandoned the release of the largest version of that model, called Behemoth, which had been \u200bdue out in the summer.<\/p>\n

The superintelligence team has been working to reassert the company\u2019s standing this \u200byear by building a new model called Avocado, but the performance of that model has also lagged expectations. \u2013 Reuters <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta is planning sweeping lay-offs that \u200ccould affect 20 per cent or more of the company, three sources…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[218,72,823,61,542,60,2597,1226],"class_list":["post-346344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-business","tag-facebook","tag-ie","tag-instagram","tag-ireland","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-meta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}