Meta’s biggest layoffs in history starts May 20 with 8,000 job cuts, and these employees are most at risk
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a date circled on the calendar: May 20. That’s when Meta plans to execute the first wave of what could be its most sweeping round of layoffs ever—close to 8,000 employees, or roughly 10% of its global workforce, gone in a single cut. And that’s before the second, still-undefined wave expected later in 2026. Three sources familiar with the plans told Reuters, which broke the story Friday, that details on the follow-up cuts—timing, scale, scope—haven’t been finalised yet. Executives may still adjust their plans based on how Meta’s AI capabilities develop, which, given the company’s $135 billion capex commitment this year alone, reads less like a caveat and more like a signal of how central AI is to everything that follows.Meta had nearly 79,000 employees on its payroll as of December 31.
Mak Zuckerberg’s AI spending spree is reshaping who—and how many—Meta hires
The cuts aren’t falling uniformly—and they’re directly tied to Zuckerberg’s all-in push on AI. Meta has committed up to $135 billion in capital expenditure this year alone and $600 billion toward US AI infrastructure by 2028. The calculus is simple: invest heavily in AI, then pare back the headcount that AI is supposed to replace.The reshuffling has already begun. In recent weeks, engineers from across the company have been moved into a new “Applied AI” organisation focused on building autonomous AI agents capable of writing code and carrying out complex tasks independently. Some staffers are also being transferred into Meta Small Business, a unit stood up just last month. Taken together, these moves suggest Meta is methodically identifying the roles it wants to keep before deciding which ones to cut.This won’t be Meta’s first round of cuts in 2026, either. In January, the company axed more than 1,000 people in its Reality Labs division. In late March, Bloomberg and CNBC confirmed a smaller restructuring across sales, recruiting, and Facebook teams—fewer than 1,000 jobs in total. And last month, Reuters first reported that Meta was weighing cuts of 20% or more—a figure a company spokesperson dismissed as “a speculative report about theoretical approaches.” The May 20 date and the 10% figure now suggest those theoretical approaches are very much on a schedule.While Meta hasn’t specified which roles will be affected on May 20, the pattern of earlier cuts offers some indication. Sales, recruiting, and global operations were trimmed in March. Reality Labs lost over 1,000 people in January. Middle management is also likely in focus—Zuckerberg has spoken openly about flattening the company’s structure, and Meta recently built an AI engineering org with manager-to-employee ratios of up to 1:50, suggesting layers of management are being engineered out. Non-AI-adjacent roles across product and operations are broadly considered most at risk.
Meta’s 2026 layoffs could surpass the ‘Year of Efficiency’ job cuts
At 8,000 jobs, this first wave alone already ranks among the largest single-round tech layoffs in recent memory. And it won’t be the last. Meta is planning further cuts in the second half of 2026—details on timing and scale are still being worked out, but the direction is clear. If those cuts materialise at a comparable scale, the full-year total could approach—or outright exceed—the 21,000 jobs Meta shed during its 2022–23 “year of efficiency,” which would make 2026 the worst year for Meta headcount in the company’s history.But the circumstances couldn’t be more different. Back then, the cuts were damage control—the stock was in freefall and pandemic-era growth bets had spectacularly collapsed. This time, Meta is on solid financial footing. Zuckerberg isn’t cutting because he has to. He’s cutting because he’s decided a leaner, AI-assisted workforce is where Meta is headed—and May 20 is when that decision starts becoming real for thousands of employees.
