The organisation has also called a halt to previously announced plans to fill 6,000 vacant roles.
Meta has announced that it will be letting go of 10pc of its workforce, roughly 8,000 employees, as it reportedly seeks to mitigate the costs of heavy AI spending. In a memo issued to employees on Thursday (23 April), Meta explained the layoffs, which were alluded to in March by Reuters, are to come into effect towards the end of May.
Bloomberg published the details of the memo, which was written by Meta’s chief people officer Janelle Gale, who said, “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.
“I know this is unwelcome news and confirming this puts everyone in an uneasy state, but we feel this is the best path forward, given the circumstances.”
US-based employees who are losing their jobs will receive a severance package which will include 16 weeks of base pay and two weeks for every year of employment. Packages outside the US will be similar but will vary by country, as will local timelines and processes.
Gale said, “For notifications, we will follow the same process we have before, on 20 May anyone who is impacted will receive an email to their work and personal accounts, please make sure your personal email is updated in Workday.
“I know this leaves everyone with nearly a month of ambiguity which is incredibly unsettling. We will try to answer your questions here in the comments but as we’re still working through the details we aren’t able to share much more until later in May.”
The organisation is also calling a halt to previously announced plans to recruit an additional 6,000 people for currently open roles. Previously made layoff announcements include the loss of 15 jobs at the Irish location and 600 roles at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs.
In recent times, Meta has prioritised investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Earlier this month the organisation agreed to pay CoreWeave roughly $21bn to access the company’s AI cloud capacity until December 2032. The new agreement came after Meta signed a $14.2bn deal with the company in September, taking the total CoreWeave has in Meta contracts to $35bn.
Meta isn’t the only high-profile tech company announcing significant layoffs. This week Microsoft revealed plans to offer its US employees voluntary buyouts. Roughly 7pc of the company’s employees will be eligible to apply and the plan will be available to workers at a senior director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70 or more.
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