Meta lays off hundreds after CEO Mark Zuckerberg – Business News
Meta is slashing hundreds of workers in Silicon Valley because the tech giant closely invests in artificial intelligence and weighs axing over 20% of its workforce.
The Facebook mother or father company is reducing practically 200 staff within the San Francisco Bay Area, based on new state filings.
The reductions will hit 124 workers in Burlingame, Calif. and one other 74 in close by Sunnyvale, with the cuts taking impact in late May and all affected positions completely eradicated, filings cited by the San Francisco Chronicle show.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is claimed to be weighing layoffs that would hit more than 20% of the company’s workforce because it ramps up spending on artificial intelligence. Nathan Posner/Shutterstock
“Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals,” a Meta spokesperson advised The Post.
“Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted.”
The company added that it was nonetheless hiring for important roles and that its headcount as of Dec. 31, 2025 was 78,865 — a 6% increase year-over-year.
The transfer comes as Meta indicators a large strategic shift — away from labor-heavy operations and towards machine-driven systems, based on specialists. Recent AI efforts embrace a deliberate $10 billion spend on Meta’s knowledge heart in El Paso, Texas.
Meanwhile, latest weeks have seen the company lay off about 700 workers working in operations, recruiting, gross sales and Meta’s “Reality Labs” unit, the Chronicle famous.
Meta is reducing practically 200 jobs within the Bay Area as half of its newest spherical of layoffs. AP
The company can also be weighing far deeper cuts.
Senior workers have reportedly been advised to arrange for layoffs that would have an effect on more than 20% of the company’s workforce — about 15,000 staff.
“This is a speculative report about theoretical approaches,” a Meta spokesperson mentioned when requested concerning the plan.
The potential reductions would mark the most important layoffs at Meta since Zuckerberg oversaw more than 20,000 job cuts during the company’s “year of efficiency” push in 2022 and 2023.
On a Meta earnings call, Zuckerberg mentioned Meta is “starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single, very talented person,” due to AI instruments.
“When a company is cutting hundreds of people and at the same time gearing up to spend $135 billion on AI, it’s sending a very clear message: the center of gravity is shifting from human-powered operations to machine-augmented operations,” Matt Britton, writer of “Generation AI,” advised The Post.
Job cuts in Burlingame and Sunnyvale are set to take impact in late May, based on state filings. AP
Meta’s Bay Area layoffs are simply the newest in a regular drumbeat of job cuts throughout the tech sector as corporations guess large on artificial intelligence.
Industrywide, the numbers are staggering. More than 152,000 tech staff have been laid off in 2024, adopted by at the least 118,000 more in 2025, based on compiled layoff trackers.
So far this yr, estimates for layoffs vary from about 45,000 to more than 52,000, a discrepancy that displays how widespread and fast-moving the reductions have change into.
At the identical time, corporations are pouring unprecedented sums into AI — an investment surge that’s reshaping hiring selections.
Major companies together with Microsoft and Amazon have introduced tens of hundreds of layoffs over the previous two years, usually tied to reorganizations and shifting priorities towards AI and cloud computing.
Even corporations that proceed hiring are doing so selectively — reducing some roles whereas aggressively recruiting for AI-related positions.
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Salesforce, for instance, has cut more than 1,000 jobs whereas concurrently hiring staff to help new AI merchandise, underscoring the uneven influence of the shift.
“Roles built on repeatable, rules-based work are the first to get squeezed,” Britton mentioned.
“Meta isn’t saying ‘we don’t need people.’ It’s saying ‘we don’t need as many people doing what people used to do.’”
The shift is already enjoying out throughout departments as soon as thought of core to tech corporations.
Zuckerberg is pouring up to $135 billion into AI whilst Meta cuts jobs throughout its workforce. Bloomberg through Getty Images
Recruiting, buyer help, fundamental gross sales operations and even elements of analysis and development are more and more being dealt with by AI systems, lowering the need for big groups.
“AI is becoming the new fixed cost, and humans are becoming the variable,” Britton mentioned.
Not everyone seems to be satisfied the cuts will stick.
“This is not a clean replacement of humans,” Ravi Sawhney, CEO of RKS Design, advised The Post.
“It is a restructuring around perceived efficiency, without fully understanding the human systems that make that efficiency real.”
