Meta will begin laying off approximately 8,000 employees on May 20, the company told staff in an internal memo last month. The cuts represent roughly 10 percent of the company's global workforce and will be followed by additional reductions in the second half of the year, according to reports citing sources familiar with the plans.
Chief people officer Janelle Gale framed the decision in standard corporate terms. "We're doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we're making," she wrote. The investments in question: between $115 billion and $135 billion in capital expenditure this year, nearly all of it directed at AI infrastructure. That is roughly double what Meta spent in 2025.
U.S. employees affected will receive 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for each year of service, along with 18 months of health coverage. Meta is also cancelling 6,000 open roles.
A Strong Quarter, Then a Layoff
The timing is difficult to square with Meta's financial results. The company reported $201 billion in revenue in 2025, up 22 percent year over year. Fourth quarter net income reached $22.8 billion, beating analyst expectations. Free cash flow was $43.6 billion. The stock climbed nearly 10 percent after the Q4 earnings report.
This is not a company in distress. Bank of America projects the restructuring will produce $7 to $8 billion in annualized savings. The pressure is on the other side of the ledger: capital spending on data centers, GPUs, and infrastructure for Llama models. Meta is building a one-gigawatt AI supercluster in Ohio and a $10 billion, 2,250-acre facility in Louisiana. CFO Susan Li warned of "significant acceleration in infrastructure expense growth" as depreciation and operating costs from these projects hit the income statement.
Who Gets Cut, Who Gets Paid
The May round is the largest since Meta's 2022-2023 "Year of Efficiency," which eliminated 21,000 positions. But that restructuring came during a stock-price crisis and a scramble to unwind pandemic-era hiring decisions. This one arrives with Meta at a $1.7 trillion market cap.
Days before the March cuts that preceded this announcement, Meta filed SEC disclosures revealing a new stock option program tied to reaching a $9 trillion market capitalization by 2031. According to analysis from Equilar, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth, chief operating officer Javier Olivan, and chief product officer Chris Cox could each earn up to $921 million. CFO Susan Li could receive up to $787 million. Mark Zuckerberg is not included in the plan.
The juxtaposition has not been lost on employees. On Blind, the anonymous professional network, workers have described the workplace as "toxic" and reported a crisis of trust around whether cuts are performance-based. That skepticism is grounded: in the January 2025 round, which Meta described as targeting low performers, some affected employees had received ratings of "at or above expectations."
The Pattern Across Tech
Meta is not an outlier. The tech industry has shed more than 92,000 jobs so far in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi. Amazon has cut at least 30,000 since October. Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts for the first time in its 51-year history. Oracle eliminated up to 30,000 to fund $156 billion in AI infrastructure.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion combined this year on AI infrastructure buildouts. The companies doing the most spending are also the ones cutting the most jobs. Executive coach Anthony Tuggle told CNBC the pattern "represents a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction."
Since 2022, Meta has eliminated roughly 33,000 positions: 11,000 in November 2022, 10,000 in early 2023, 3,600 in January 2025, and approximately 9,700 across the three 2026 waves so far. The company ended 2025 with 78,865 employees after rehiring aggressively through 2024 and 2025. It is now cutting deeper than it rehired.
When asked whether additional layoffs are possible beyond the current plan, Gale did not provide assurances. "I'd love to say that there are no more layoffs, but I can't say something we can't deliver."
For more on AI-framed restructurings, see Jobbi's coverage of Coinbase's recent cuts.