Meta will lay off about 10% of its staff in May to finance its new artificial intelligence offensive
Meta plans to lay off around 10% of your staff in May, a decision that would affect about 8,000 people if the size of the company at the end of 2025 is taken as a reference. The information, provided by Bloomberg based on an internal note signed by personnel director Janelle Gale, also adds another relevant piece of information: the company will also close about 6,000 open vacancies.
According to that internal message, affected employees will be notified on May 20. Gale justifies the measure as part of Meta’s effort to operate more efficiently and to offset other investments what the company is doing. The formulation fits with the pattern that is repeated in much of the sector: reducing labor costs at the same time that spending on infrastructure and talent linked to artificial intelligence skyrockets.
In the case of Meta, that turn is especially visible. The company already anticipated in January that its capital expenditure for 2026 would be between 115,000 and 135,000 million dollarswell above the 72.22 billion in 2025. The official objective is to sustain both its main business and the effort around Meta Superintelligence Labs, the new structure with which Zuckerberg wants to strengthen his position in the AI race.
Another round in an adjustment that continues to grow
You may think we are publishing the same news again. However, this new batch is added to the adjustments that had already been put on the table in March, when it emerged that Meta was considering firing the 20% or more of your workforce while maintaining a multi-million dollar bet on AI.
Added to this are other more recent cuts in different areas. At the beginning of the year, layoffs were already known in selection, social media and sales teams, in addition to adjustments that affected approximately 10% of Reality Labs. That is, the round now scheduled for May does not open a new stage, but rather deepens a reorganization which has been developing for months and which points to a company increasingly focused on AI, data centers and very specific profiles.
The message once again relies on efficiency, a word that Meta has been using for years to justify restructuring. But this time the context is somewhat different, because the savings do not seem to respond only to the correction of past overcontracting, but also to an active redistribution of resources towards the company’s new strategic priority.
Less metaverse, more AI and a contradiction that is difficult to hide
This change in priorities had already been seen since the end of 2025, when Meta began to trim metaverse weight within its planning and to divert resources towards smart glasses, wearables and artificial intelligence. The reorientation was clear with the budgetary adjustment that the company was preparing in Reality Labs and with the progressive abandonment of a discourse focused on Horizon Worlds, in line with what was already reflected by Meta’s withdrawal into the metaverse to focus on AI.
The contradiction, however, remains evident. Meta cuts thousands of jobs while allocating huge amounts to data centers, high-level recruitment and infrastructure for advanced models. The company argues that it needs to be more agile and efficient, but at the same time maintains a policy of massive investment in a field where its results still do not fully justify the enthusiasm conveyed by its public story.
Therefore, this new round of layoffs cannot be read only as a financial adjustment. It also reflects the type of company Zuckerberg wants to build from now on: less diversified, more focused on AI and with less margin for businesses or teams that do not fit directly into that bet. We will see if the commitment to AI, in addition to wearable devices, works for the company.
