Meta has announced a comprehensive workforce restructuring that will cut 10% of its workforce on Wednesday with additional deep cuts slated for later this year. According to reports from Reuters, the company informed employees on Monday about the restructuring, with 7,000 employees being transferred to AI-related initiatives and managerial roles being eliminated. The layoffs and employee transfers will affect approximately 20% of Meta's total workforce, with the company having 77,986 employees at the end of March according to company filings. The restructuring comes as Meta increasingly prioritizes AI development across its businesses, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The companywide bloodbath will take place in three waves, with impacted workers learning their fate by email at 4 a.m. local time in their region, as reported by The New York Post.
The restructuring will see employees transferred to four newly created AI organizations focused on building AI-powered products and tools. As reported by Reuters, these teams include Applied AI Engineering (AAI) and the Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN, which are part of Meta's "AI for Work" efforts announced by CTO Andrew Bosworth. Both organizations are developing AI agents designed to handle tasks currently performed by human workers. The newly created initiatives also include Central Analytics, which will measure productivity and analytics for agent development. Meta has also reportedly scaled back some metaverse-related efforts while increasing employee expectations around the use of AI tools in day-to-day work. About 7,000 employees are expected to shift to new roles at the Facebook and Instagram parent, as reported by The New York Post.
The company plans to simplify operations by removing managerial positions and reorganize teams to improve AI workflows. According to Reuters, Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale told employees that "many leaders will announce org changes" and that "as org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native design principles into their new org structures." The company is now at the stage where many organizations can operate with flatter structures and smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership. The company is slashing managerial roles as part of the reorganization as it relies more heavily on artificial intelligence tools to get work done. Gale added that "We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding," as reported by The New York Post.
Employees were informed about the changes on Monday, with some workers already being reassigned while others await updates. As reported by Reuters, some of the transfers have already happened, while in other cases employees will be notified on Wednesday. The restructuring has prompted significant employee resistance, with more than 1,000 employees signing a petition decrying the installation of mouse-tracking software for training Meta's AI models. Employees have been protesting the moves with flyers at company offices and angry posts on the internal communications platform, Workplace, with many responding to executives with pictures of elephants imploring them to address the layoffs. Ahead of the layoffs, one employee told the San Francisco Standard that the worker's office has been in "chaos" as employees fear they'll be axed. "I am generally dissatisfied with leadership and angry," the unnamed employee told the publication. "This is as anxious and stressed as I have ever been at a job."
According to Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings, META ranks in the 89th percentile for Growth, though the stock continues to show a negative trend across short, medium and long-term time frames. The workforce overhaul represents Meta's strategic pivot toward AI development as the company seeks to strengthen its competitive position in the artificial intelligence sector while optimizing operational efficiency. The changes reflect a broader pattern of AI-linked job cuts among major US companies this year, particularly in the tech sector. The first three months of 2026 saw 52,050 tech layoffs — a 40% jump from the same period last year, according to executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. In March, AI led the list of causes employers listed for tech layoffs — accounting for 15,341 of the firings, or 25% of the total.
