Meta is cutting several hundred jobs across Reality Labs, Facebook, and other departments as the tech giant doubles down on its multibillion-dollar bet on artificial intelligence. The layoffs, first reported by CNBC, mark a significant workforce restructuring as CEO Mark Zuckerberg reallocates resources toward AI infrastructure and away from other initiatives, including the company's long-troubled metaverse ambitions.
Meta is making another round of cuts. The company is laying off several hundred employees across its Reality Labs division, Facebook, and other departments as it continues its aggressive pivot toward artificial intelligence, according to CNBC.
The timing tells the real story. While Meta pours billions into AI infrastructure - from massive GPU clusters to developing its own Llama language models - other parts of the business are getting squeezed. Reality Labs, the division responsible for Meta's virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses, has been a particular cash drain. The unit has racked up over $50 billion in losses since 2020, even as Zuckerberg insists the metaverse remains a long-term priority.
But AI is where the money's going now. Meta recently announced plans to spend upwards of $60 billion on AI-related infrastructure in 2026 alone, building out data centers packed with Nvidia GPUs and developing custom silicon. The company's Llama 3 models have emerged as credible open-source competitors to OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini, making AI not just a research project but a core product strategy.
The affected employees span multiple departments, suggesting this isn't a targeted cut at one underperforming division but rather a broader efficiency drive. Facebook's core social networking business, while still massively profitable, faces pressure to trim costs as user growth in lucrative markets plateaus. Instagram and WhatsApp continue performing well, but Meta's overall headcount ballooned during the pandemic - the company employed over 86,000 people as of late 2023 before previous rounds of cuts.
