Meta is preparing to cut about 8,000 jobs while pouring record ad profits into artificial intelligence.
The restructuring, expected to begin Wednesday, May 20, would eliminate roughly 10% of Meta’s workforce and leave 6,000 open roles unfilled, according to reports cited in the draft. The cuts come as Meta raises its 2026 capital expenditure plans to as much as $145 billion, much of it aimed at AI infrastructure.
The contrast is the story: Meta is not cutting from an obvious weakness. It is shrinking parts of the company while building the compute-heavy future it believes will define the next era of Big Tech.
The $145 billion AI gamble
The workforce reduction arrives at a time of unprecedented financial strength for Meta. The company recently reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $56.31 billion and net income of $26.8 billion, building on a full-year 2025 revenue of $201 billion, according to TNW’s Ana Maria Constantin.
Instead of cutting to survive a downturn, Meta is shrinking to fund an aggressive technological pivot. The company recently raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from $39.2 billion in 2024. This capital is being poured directly into Nvidia GPUs, infrastructure deals, and an expansive Llama model ecosystem.
In an April memo cited by CNBC, Meta informed staff that the reductions are “all part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” Finance chief Susan Li further noted to investors during the first-quarter earnings call that executives “don’t really know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future.”
Internal tensions rise over layoffs and AI monitoring
Inside the company, the atmosphere has grown intensely strained. Employees have even created internal countdown websites that track the days until May 20. “Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally, executives,” an Instagram employee told WIRED.
Compounding the anxiety is a controversial internal software program introduced in April called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI). Installed on US employees’ corporate laptops, the software logs keystrokes, clicks, and screenshots to train digital AI agents to navigate white-collar tasks.
According to sources who spoke with WIRED, when employees raised privacy concerns internally, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth “belittled and berated” the dissenters. Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton defended the initiative, stating, “There are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content, and the data is not used for any other purpose.”
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A Silicon Valley trend
Meta is not the only tech heavyweight trading headcount for AI compute power.
According to tracking data from Layoffs.fyi, nearly 110,000 tech workers have been laid off across 137 companies so far in 2026. Tech giants like Oracle, Amazon, and Cisco have all executed cuts this year while simultaneously boosting their AI infrastructure guidance.
At Meta, the May layoffs are expected to hit recruiting, customer support, content moderation, and non-AI product teams the hardest. The remaining teams are being consolidated into AI-focused pods within the company’s Superintelligence Labs division, led by Alexandr Wang.
Also read: LinkedIn is cutting jobs and trimming spending across major teams despite revenue growth, as tech layoffs keep spreading.
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