Meta considers laying off 20% of staff to fund AI infrastructure

Meta is considering large-scale layoffs that could affect up to 20% of the company's employees. According to sources, the cuts will help Facebook's parent company offset aggressive spending on AI infrastructure, as well as costs for acquisitions and hiring artificial intelligence specialists. The scale of potential layoffs looks impressive even by technology industry standards.

According to the latest data, Meta employs around 74,000 people — approximately 15,000 jobs could be at risk. For comparison: in November 2022, when the advertising market slowed and the company's stock crashed amid the metaverse experiment failure, Mark Zuckerberg laid off 11,000 employees. That round was called a turning point for the company — the current one could turn out to be even larger.

The principal difference from 2022 is that Meta is financially healthy today. The advertising business has recovered and continues to grow, quarterly revenue is setting records. The reason for potential layoffs is not a crisis, but a strategic choice: Zuckerberg has set a course for unprecedented investments in artificial intelligence.

At the beginning of 2025, the company announced capital expenditures of $60–65 billion — most will go toward building data centers and purchasing chips for training AI models. At the same time, Meta is aggressively hiring AI specialists, offering compensation packages that are hard to ignore. According to available information, the company is actively poaching researchers from leading AI laboratories, and also conducting targeted acquisitions — seeking to take a leading position in the generative AI race.

All of this requires resources, and not just financial ones. Large technology companies switching to AI typically simultaneously cut "traditional" divisions and expand staffing in new directions. In Meta's case, potential candidates for layoffs are content moderation teams, part of operational and infrastructure divisions not directly related to AI.

The logic is simple: every dollar saved on traditional functions can be directed to the accelerating AI race. This approach reflects a broader trend in Big Tech. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon conducted several waves of layoffs during 2023–2025, while aggressively hiring AI engineers.

The difference with Meta is that other companies' layoffs were partly against the backdrop of slowing growth. Meta is making layoffs while in strong financial health: this is a clearer signal of strategic pivot, not a forced measure. If layoffs proceed at the stated scale, the consequences will extend beyond one company.

Thousands of highly qualified specialists — product managers, engineers, operations managers — will simultaneously enter the job market, despite lacking the AI engineer profile that is currently most in demand by the industry. For Meta itself, this means concentrating all resources on a single strategic bet on which Zuckerberg is betting the company's future.