- 16,000 workers (20% of Meta’s workforce) are expected to be at risk
- Zuckerberg said “AI [will] change the way dramatically [Meta] working in 2026
- 2023 was already Meta’s “Efficiency Year” – 10,000 workers lost their jobs
Meta plans to cut as much as 20% of its workforce according to Pakinomist reporting – which corresponds to around 16,000 employees.
Although the company has yet to confirm such a decision, reports suggest that executives have been asked to begin preparing for cost-cutting measures.
The workforce shift is believed to be largely attributable to AI – Meta has already seen the effects of artificial intelligence on efficiency, but the company has also shifted course to focus more on AI tools than metaverse experiences.
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CEO Mark Zuckerberg is publicly pushing generative artificial intelligence at the company — the superintelligence team has also grown recently. A few days ago, it was confirmed that Facebook’s parent company had acquired Moltbook, a social media platform exclusively for AI agents, with the company’s executives moving over to the Meta Superintelligence Labs division.
Meta also bought AI firm Manus for about $2 billion in late 2025, which caught the attention of Chinese regulators.
During the company’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that “2026 will be the year artificial intelligence begins to dramatically change the way we work.” He also noted that Meta has already started to see internal shifts due to AI-driven efficiency.
Meta has already laid off many Reality Labs workers this year and about 3,600 employees this time last year. The company also declared 2023 to be the ‘year of efficiency’ – 10,000 workers lost their jobs as part of this announcement, but the company promised to hire 5,000 workers in other roles.
A Meta spokesman said TechRadar Pro: “This is a speculative report on theoretical approaches.”
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