Meta is pouring billions of dollars into AI and preparing for potential job cuts, two senior employees with knowledge of the matter told Business Insider.
Sources said some executives were asked to create cost-cutting plans but were not told the scope or timing.
Reuters, which first reported on the potential job cuts on Friday, said up to 20% of Meta employees could be laid off. As of the end of 2025, Meta employs approximately 79,000 people, so a potential 20% reduction in employment would result in approximately 16,000 jobs being eliminated. This is the largest reduction since Meta cut 11,000 jobs in 2022 and another 10,000 in 2023. Meta laid off 1,500 people in its Reality Labs division in January.
A person familiar with the company’s thinking told Business Insider that layoffs could occur as early as a month.
“This is speculative reporting regarding a theoretical approach,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone told Business Insider.
If Meta moves forward with these layoffs, it would signal broader changes in the tech industry as companies pour massive amounts of capital into AI infrastructure and talent, shedding the workforce that once fueled their growth during the pandemic.
In recent weeks, Atlassian has announced plans to cut about 1,600 jobs, or 10% of its workforce, and couple its move to AI with efficiency drives. Block is also reducing headcount, and CEO Jack Dorsey said new AI tools will allow the company to operate more efficiently with smaller teams. These layoffs signal a new strategy for Silicon Valley. As AI capabilities increase, big tech companies are betting that they can be built faster and cheaper with fewer people.
Meta announced that it plans to invest approximately $600 billion in data center construction by 2028. The company also offered compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years to attract top AI researchers to its new superintelligence team, led by former Scale AI CEO Alexnadr Wang. Funding these bets while keeping Wall Street happy means finding savings elsewhere. Head count is the most obvious measure.
During Meta’s January earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that the company was already “elevating individual contributors and flattening our teams.” He added: “Projects that previously required large teams are now being accomplished by one extremely talented person.” Last week, Meta launched a brand new AI engineering organization. This organization allows teams to have a maximum manager-to-employee ratio of 1:50.
Given Meta’s size, a 20% cut at Meta would dwarf many of its peers in absolute terms and eliminate more jobs than the entire workforce of many midsize tech companies.
Meta’s focus on AI comes as a result of a difficult internal model effort. The company faced criticism that early versions of the Llama 4 model produced misleading benchmark results, and ultimately shelved the model’s largest version, Behemoth, which was scheduled for release last summer.
The company’s Superintelligence team has since been working on new models called “Avocado” and “Mango,” but they have reportedly fallen short of internal expectations and have been postponed until May.
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