Khaberni - Meta intends to conduct the first wave of the widespread layoffs planned for this year on May 20, with more to follow, according to three informed sources to the "Reuters" agency.
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, will lay off about 10% of its global workforce, or nearly 8000 employees, in this initial round, according to one of the sources.
The company plans for more layoffs in the second half of the year, although the details of those reductions, including timing and amount, have not yet been finalized, and officials may adjust their plans as they monitor developments in artificial intelligence capabilities, according to the sources.
Reuters reported last month that the company was planning to lay off 20% or more of its global workforce, while Meta declined to comment on the timing or extent of the planned cuts.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence as he seeks to significantly reshape the internal workings of his company around the technology, reflecting a broader pattern among major American companies this year, especially in the technology sector. Likewise, Amazon has cut down 30,000 employees from its companies in recent months, representing nearly 10% of the white-collar workers, while the fintech company Block cut about half of its staff in February, with officials in both cases linking the cuts to efficiency gains from artificial intelligence.
Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job layoffs in the technology sector worldwide, reported that 73,212 employees have lost their jobs so far this year, compared to 153,000 for the entire year of 2024.
This year's layoffs by Meta will be the largest for the social networking giant since the restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 dubbed the "Year of Efficiency," when it eliminated about 21,000 jobs. At that time, Meta's stock was sharply down, and the company was struggling to correct growth assumptions in the pandemic era that ultimately proved unsustainable. But the company is in a more comfortable financial position this time, as officials envisage a future with fewer managerial layers and greater efficiency brought by AI-supported workers.
Meta shares have risen by 3.68% since the beginning of the year, although they are down from their all-time high achieved last summer. Last year, it generated more than 200 billion dollars in revenue and reported a profit of 60 billion dollars despite significant spending on artificial intelligence.
Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Meta employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31, according to its latest filing. In recent weeks, Meta has reorganized teams in the Reality Labs department and moved engineers from across the company to the new "Applied AI" organization tasked with accelerating the development of AI agents capable of writing code and performing complex tasks independently.
One source said that some employees will also be transferred to "Meta for Small Business," a unit created last month, as part of restructuring.
