Meta is beginning to lay off 8,000 employees this week, about ten percent of its total workforce. Singapore was the first to receive the layoff email, at 4 a.m. local time. At the same time, Meta reassigned 7,000 employees to AI-related roles. The move has been in the works for some time and is intended to free up resources for further investment in AI infrastructure.
The Singapore office was the first to receive the notification, with European and American employees following later. The layoffs are the practical implementation of the announcement CEO Mark Zuckerberg made on April 23. In that announcement, he proposed a ten percent reduction, driven by the desire to cut operational costs and allow AI investments to reach record highs.
Meta’s capital expenditures for 2025 totaled $72.2 billion; for 2026, the company expects at least $115 billion, with the majority earmarked for Nvidia hardware and data center infrastructure.
Layoffs and restructuring
The layoff of 8,000 employees is just one side of the reorganization. The other side unfolded on Monday, when Chief People Officer Janelle Gale announced via an internal memo that Meta is reassigning 7,000 employees to AI-related roles.
This includes the development of AI agents, apps, and infrastructure. In other words: an attempt to implement roles that AI could perform. Although Meta is reportedly tracking employee tasks, including via mouse movements, it is not yet known whether the laid-off employees will be directly replaced by AI. Instead, they are being laid off before such AI is developed.
Which roles are affected?
The April 23 announcement revealed that the layoffs primarily affect support roles. HR, marketing, communications, and recruitment are particularly hard hit. Engineering and AI research teams remain largely unaffected. Meta also announced that 6,000 open positions will not be filled.
Earlier in 2026, Meta had already carried out several rounds of restructuring. In January, a round of layoffs took place in the Reality Labs division. In March, there were reports of potential cuts of up to 20 percent of the workforce. It is possible that this is still happening in phases, but the 8,000 layoffs fall short of that 20 percent.
Broader trend in the technology sector
The layoffs at Meta have as much to do with the company’s internal problems as with external factors. For instance, the bet on the metaverse revolution has proven to be a historic misstep, and layoffs had already occurred in the division responsible for the metaverse, Reality Labs.
Meta has not yet released details regarding severance packages or internal reassignment opportunities. The exact impact will become clear with the release of the Q2 2026 results on July 29.