Meta cancels hiring plans for 6,000 roles amid ongoing layoffs and a pivot to artificial intelligence development.

Meta has launched a wave of layoffs that will affect 10 percent of the company’s global workforce, representing about 8,000 people.

The cuts, which began on Wednesday, are planned to occur in three waves, beginning at 4am local time for those affected, the Reuters news agency reported.

Workers affected so far include those on the company’s integrity team – the group in charge of removing malicious content and hate speech – as well as members of the company’s cybersecurity teams and content design division, according to reporting from Business Insider.

Workers in the United States will receive 16 weeks of severance pay, in addition to an extra two weeks for every year they have been employed at the company, representatives for Meta confirmed to Al Jazeera.

In addition to the cuts, the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram said it would cancel plans to hire 6,000 people and shift 7,000 other employees into artificial intelligence (AI) workflow-related roles.

This comes amid reports of declining morale at the Mark Zuckerberg-led company following the launch of an AI tracking programme for workers in an effort for Meta to train its own AI models, a point of contention for workers, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the paper, more than 1,500 people signed a petition demanding that the company not collect their data.

The move is part of a series of issues affecting morale, with one unnamed policy employee telling Wired that morale is low in part because its US workforce is “being used to train the AI models that will replace them”.

Another point of concern is decreased spending on workers, including cuts to annual raises and median total compensation falling by nearly $30,000.

Investing in AI

Zuckerberg, who is the world’s sixth-richest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is not averse to investing in the business. However, that spending has focused on AI development, including the Meta Superintelligence initiative.

Capital expenditures are forecast to hit $125bn to $145bn for the year, an increase of more than double since 2025.

“The way to think about the investment is that we’re making a bet [on] the individual things that people care about, and that people are going to be more important in the future,” Zuckerberg said in an earnings call in April.

A recent Goldman Sachs survey found that AI-driven layoffs equate to more than 16,000 payroll cuts per month this year. This comes as tech giant Cisco announced it is cutting roughly 4,000 workers.

Meta was up 0.1 percent in midday trading.