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meta Shares rose in pre-market trading on Monday following “speculative” reports that the company plans to lay off more than 20% of its workforce in line with its massive AI spending plans this year.
Reuters reported on Saturday, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that the tech giant’s management had instructed senior executives to come up with a plan for layoffs. The company’s shares rose 2.7% in premarket trading at 6:16 a.m. ET, after falling nearly 4% on Friday.
Meta employed approximately 79,000 people as of December 2025, and the scale of the layoffs described could affect more than 15,000 employees. This is the biggest job reduction since late 2022, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was cutting 11,000 jobs and hiring as part of a broader cost-cutting strategy.
Asked whether the Reuters report was accurate, a CNBC spokesperson said: “This is a speculative report regarding a theoretical approach.”
Meta’s layoffs are likely to continue as tech giants focus on building out expensive AI infrastructure and improving efficiency through AI integrated into workflows.
Several companies have already revealed plans for large-scale AI-related layoffs in 2026. Jack Dorsey’s block The company announced in February that it would lay off 4,000 employees in order to “use AI to automate more tasks so we can move faster with smaller, better teams.”
AI spending reaches $135 billion
Meta revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings report in January that AI-related capital spending this year will be in the range of $115 billion to $135 billion, roughly double the amount it spent building a new AI division in 2025.
This is part of a total of $700 billion in hyperscaler technology, including: Amazon, alphabetand microsoftare planning to invest in AI this year.
The plans have raised concerns among some investors that spending could become unsustainable when compared to the revenue generated by AI.
Zuckerberg said 2026 will be a big year for AI, as the company’s investments focus on his mission to “build a personal superintelligence.”
Last year, the company invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI. Meta eventually poached the group’s CEO, Alexander Wang, and some of his top engineers and researchers.
“We’ve seen significant layoffs at companies like Block, which laid off 40% of its workforce ‘because of AI,’ but if Meta intends to reduce its workforce at this scale while increasing its investment in AI, we think it signals a broader shift. AI is increasingly driving productivity,” Jefferies analysts said in a note on Sunday.
“This has important implications not just for the meta, but across the broader internet/software landscape as investors reconsider the relationship between headcount, growth and profits…These reductions are clearly being considered as part of an effort to offset rising AI infrastructure costs with a significant increase in AI-driven capital spending,” they added.
