Meta axes hundreds in restructuring

• Meta slashes jobs across sales, recruiting, Reality Labs
• Under 1,000 roles affected globally; some may shift
• Focus shifts to AI infrastructure and top researchers

Meta has slashed several hundred jobs as part of a restructuring bid that has impacted multiple teams at the company. The changes have affected sales, recruiting, and the Reality Labs hardware division. These layoffs will impact workers in both the U.S. as well as international markets, according to a Bloomberg report.

Some of the employees will be given a chance to shift to other jobs and move to other locations while continuing to work within the same company. The report further detailed how some members of Meta’s Reality Labs division were asked to work remotely on Wednesday while preparing for the cuts.

These cuts are expected to impact fewer than 1,000 total employees, according to a person familiar with the matter. At the start of the year, Meta had about 79,000 employees worldwide.

Meta’s Aggressive Bid to Add AI to Its Work Procedures

Meta has led an aggressive pursuit to add AI to aid its functions. The company projected record capital expenditures this year—as much as $135 billion on U.S. infrastructure projects by 2028. Zuckerberg had been vocal about how AI systems will disrupt the company’s workflows, and engineers at the company are already using AI agents to help with coding and other projects.

Reality Labs has witnessed several job cuts this year. This is an internal division at Meta that has been working on virtual reality headsets. The company had slashed off 1,000 people from its workforce in January, as the company pushed more employees to work on AI implementation apart from virtual world products.

Major Job Cuts Ahead

Meta’s wearables and ads divisions have received a daunting email directing them to work remotely on Wednesday, with a note that leadership will share more information. Meta’s wearables unit, as well as the augmented reality business, was described in the latest earnings report as one of the key investment areas.

In an earlier report, Reuters had stated that Meta was planning to cut around 20% or more of its workforce. With 79,000 employees on its record, the cuts could include close to 15,800 jobs. In January, the brand had slashed 1,500 employees from its Reality Labs division. Is this a stark example of AI taking human-led roles? A brutal awakening for employees, Meta has committed $600 billion to build out data centres by 2028, with 2026 capex projected as high as $135 billion. It is also handing out packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to bring in top AI researchers.

To finance these changes, Meta is skimping on what seems excessive on the books. Zuckerberg had already said in the past that projects that once required big teams to function properly can now be reduced to a single talented person. The fact that Meta’s new frontier model, Avocado, is falling short on coding and reasoning benchmarks has further exacerbated the situation.