Meta $META is moving 7,000 employees into new roles tied to artificial intelligence, according to an internal memo reported by multiple outlets, as the tech giant prepares to cut about 10% of its global workforce.
The memo, reported by Bloomberg and Reuters, says the combined effect of layoffs and transfers will hit roughly a fifth of the company's total workforce. Company filings show Meta's workforce stood at 77,986 as of the end of March. Employees in North America were asked to work from home Wednesday, when layoff notifications are expected to go out.
In her memo, Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale pointed to an organizational shift in which teams would shrink and reporting layers would be reduced. "As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures," Gale wrote.
Meta hasn't commented publicly.
The destination groups include Applied AI Engineering, Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN, and Central Analytics, each of which CTO Andrew Bosworth had introduced earlier under the umbrella of Meta's "AI for Work" initiative. The mandate of both Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator is to develop AI agents that would take over work now handled by people. A role for Central Analytics would be to measure output and performance data as AI agents are built out. Details on a fourth group, Enterprise Solutions, are expected soon, Gale said.
An earlier memo from Gale also noted that 6,000 unfilled positions have been eliminated and that managerial layers are being cut.
Meta's planned layoffs, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has connected to surging AI capital spending, are expected to begin Wednesday. Zuckerberg has said the company's heavy investment in compute infrastructure has reduced capital available for headcount. For 2026, Meta has told investors it expects to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion in capital expenditures, roughly double its outlays from the prior year. Gale's memo spelled out that American employees who are let go will be paid 16 weeks of severance, with an extra two weeks added for every year of tenure at the company.
Further rounds of cuts are expected later in the year, though no dates or scope have been set for those reductions. Among the units facing cuts in May are Reality Labs, recruiting, sales, global operations, and the Facebook social division.
The restructuring has generated internal friction. According to Reuters, a staff petition protesting the deployment of mouse-tracking software had drawn upward of 1,000 signatures; workers objected that the software was being used to collect behavioral data intended to help AI systems learn to mimic human computer use. Employees have also posted criticism of executives on Meta's internal communications platform over the handling of layoff announcements.