Meta plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce next month and has told employees it is not ruling out further layoffs.
Janelle Gale, Meta’s chief human resources officer, told employees during an internal meeting Thursday, according to three people who participated in the call.
“The question always comes up, are there going to be more job cuts? I’d like to say there won’t be any more job cuts, but I can’t say it can’t happen,” Mr Gale said at the meeting. “Business is strong, but priorities have changed and competition is fierce. We will continue to manage costs responsibly.”
She said this means Meta will “continue to evolve the team as needed” and “work to redeploy talent.” She pointed out how Meta is investing in applied AI organizations.
Gale did not identify specific organizations, but added that some organizations will be more affected by the layoffs than others.
Meta-leaders also said during the meeting that the use of AI tokens will not be considered as a factor in layoffs.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also addressed the layoffs at the conference, saying that AI automation was not a factor behind them. He said AI has made small teams much more efficient.
During the call, Zuckerberg also mentioned Meta’s plans to monitor employee keystrokes and mouse movements to improve its AI models. He said humans are not actually observing what staff are doing, and this data is abstracted and used to improve the AI.
MetaAI chief Alexander Wang also attended the meeting wearing a camouflage T-shirt with multiple deer on it, according to a photo obtained by Business Insider. During the Q&A, he praised Meta’s latest AI capabilities, especially the recently released Spark model.
Mehta declined to comment for this article.
Reuters reported in March that Meta plans to cut about 20% of its total workforce this year.
Gale said at the meeting that the impending layoffs have hurt morale at Meta, and that the company is trying to make such a difficult situation “in the best possible shape.” She added that Meta has tripled COBRA medical coverage to 18 months.
Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Lee previously said on Wednesday’s first-quarter earnings call that she was “not sure” the ideal size for the company’s more than 77,000 employees. Meta announced that infrastructure spending, primarily on AI, will double this year, reaching a range of $125 billion to $145 billion.
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