Meta plans to cut 10 percent of its work force, or roughly 8,000 employees, and close another 6,000 open roles, according to an internal memo on Thursday, as the company spends heavily on developing artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive, has said he expects much of the work being done in the technology industry to eventually be overtaken by A.I. powered systems, including coding assistants that help engineers write software.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we\u2019re making,\u201d Janelle Gale, Meta\u2019s chief people officer, said in the memo to employees. \u201cThis is not an easy trade-off and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Meta confirmed the cuts and declined further comment.<\/p>\n
Mr. Zuckerberg is reorganizing his company around A.I. products amid a fierce race to lead in the technology against rivals like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. Meta has made progress in fits and starts, but has lagged behind competitors in developing foundational A.I. models.<\/p>\n
To catch up, Mr. Zuckerberg has spent more than $70 billion on A.I. investments like data centers, semiconductors and real estate to enable Meta to do the costly work of developing cutting-edge A.I. In a call with investors in January, he said the company expected to spend $115 billion to $135 billion<\/a> this year, nearly twice the $72 billion it spent last year, much of which will be earmarked for A.I. development.<\/p>\n Mr. Zuckerberg has described developing A.I.-powered social media products that are a kind of \u201cpersonal superintelligence,\u201d which he hopes people will incorporate into their daily lives.<\/p>\n