Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is planning extensive layoffs that could affect up to 20 percent of its workforce — approximately 16,000 employees — as the company seeks to offset the soaring costs of its artificial intelligence infrastructure. The plans were first reported by Reuters on March 14, 2026, though Meta spokesperson Andy Stone has called the reporting “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches,” indicating no final decision has been announced.

AI Costs Drive Historic Job Cuts

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been aggressively pushing the company to compete in the generative AI race, offering compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars to recruit top AI researchers to its newly created superintelligence team. The proposed layoffs are aimed at freeing up capital to fund massive investments in AI data centres, which are projected to cost around $600 billion through 2028.

Zuckerberg stated in January 2026 that AI tools now allow a “single very talented person” to complete projects that previously required large teams — a statement widely seen as signalling the company’s intent to reduce its human workforce. Senior Meta executives have already instructed company leaders to begin planning how to trim their teams, according to anonymous sources cited by Reuters.

The cuts are expected to hit middle management, operations, and shared services most heavily. The company has also been making major acquisitions this week, including Moltbook — a social networking platform designed for AI agents — and is reportedly spending at least $2 billion to acquire Chinese AI startup Manus.​

Scale of Layoffs: Largest in Meta’s History

If the 20 percent reduction goes ahead, it would be the largest workforce cut in Meta’s entire history — surpassing even the major restructuring of 2022–2023. Meta had approximately 79,000 employees as of December 31, 2025, according to its latest regulatory filing, meaning roughly 16,000 jobs could be at risk.

During the previous restructuring — which Zuckerberg called the “year of efficiency” — the company laid off about 11,000 employees in November 2022 (roughly 13 percent of its workforce) and a further 10,000 in early 2023. The current planned cuts would exceed both of those rounds combined.​

The company has not confirmed a final timeline, and the exact scale remains under internal discussion.​

AI Setbacks: Avocado Model Delayed

The layoffs come alongside significant setbacks in Meta’s AI programme. The company’s superintelligence team has been developing a next-generation model codenamed Avocado — designed to outperform the existing Llama 4 series in text and coding tasks. According to an internal memo, Avocado achieved 10x compute efficiency over Llama 4 Maverick and is reportedly over 100 times more efficient than the delayed Llama 4 Behemoth.​

However, the New York Times reported on March 12, 2026, that Avocado’s public release has been delayed to at least May 2026 after its performance fell short of internal expectations in final testing. Meta is also developing a companion model called Mango, focused on high-quality image and video generation to rival tools like OpenAI’s Sora.

The superintelligence team is led by Alexandr Wang — the 28-year-old founder of Scale AI — who joined Meta after the company acquired a near-majority stake in his startup for over $14 billion.​

Industry Impact and Worker Concerns

The announcement has sent shockwaves through the technology industry, where Meta has long been seen as a relatively stable large employer. Worker advocacy groups have criticised the company for pursuing massive capital expenditure on AI while simultaneously planning to cut thousands of jobs.​

Meta’s layoff plans are part of a broader pattern of AI-driven workforce reductions across the technology sector in 2026. Earlier in January, Amazon confirmed it would cut approximately 16,000 jobs — nearly 10 percent of its workforce — also citing AI-driven efficiency as a factor. Critics argue that the shift toward AI-assisted operations will disproportionately harm mid-level professionals whose work is being automated.​

What This Means for Tech Workers

Meta’s actions send a clear signal to the technology industry: AI is no longer just a product — it is now being used as a direct justification for replacing large portions of the workforce. For the tens of thousands of employees currently at Meta, the uncertainty is significant. The company has not yet issued a formal statement confirming the scale, timeline or which departments will be most affected.

As Zuckerberg doubles down on his vision of an AI-first company, the human cost of that transformation is becoming impossible to ignore.

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