Mark Zuckerberg’s company is not having its best week. To the sanctions imposed by a US court for not protecting users of the addictive consequences of their platformsjoins a new round of layoffs that affects hundreds of people in five business areas. It’s not the first time so far this year, and it probably won’t be the last either.
We cannot say that the measure has caught Meta employees by surprise, because a few days ago Reuters I was already ahead that the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was planning to cut staff due to the increased costs of AI development. Now have materialized eliminating the departments closest to the metaverse.
700 employees on the street and a metaverse that goes out. According to published NBC Based on sources close to the company, Meta will lay off about 700 employees in this round. The cuts will affect Reality Labs, the division that for years was the flagship of Zuckerberg’s big bet on the metaverse, which just a few days ago announced the Horizon Worlds closure on Quest headsetsas well as some in the human resources departments, sales and Facebook employees, as pointed out The New York Times.
Those affected are a small fraction of the nearly 78,000 employees that Meta currently has on staff, but the reason given by the company is already a classic in big tech: “Meta’s teams restructure or implement changes periodically to guarantee that they are in the best position to achieve their objectives,” said a Meta spokesperson. in a statement to which you have had access NBC.
Layoffs down, bonuses up. Hours before these layoffs were announced, Meta presented a new stock compensation program for six of its senior managers. The message between the lines has not gone unnoticed. While the company cut staff with the argument of reducing costs to face the huge investments in AIwith a forecast of expenses of between 162,000 and 169,000 million dollars for 2026, the executives closest to Zuckerberg saw their compensation increased by up to 921 million dollars each for the next five years.
Meta justifies the increase to its managers as a tool to retain talent in the middle of the war for the best AI profiles, but the temporal coincidence between both announcements could not have been more unfortunate.
Layoffs without financial hardship. Historically, a company laying off its employees was a clear sign of financial problems. Instead, in the age of AI, each round of layoffs is celebrated on the financial markets with increases in the price of shares because it is a clear sign that the company is restructuring to adapt to changes in strategy for the development of AI and continue generating million-dollar income.
In fact, one of the phenomena that is occurring In the latest rounds of layoffs in large technology companies, while hundreds of employees are being laid off from certain departments, new vacancies are opening up. to hire new employees with another profile more AI oriented.
Meta is not an isolated case. What happens in Meta is part of a dynamic that is repeated throughout the sector. Amazon, Microsoft and other big tech companies have announced massive cuts in recent months, and in all cases the AI appears as the main justification for layoffs.
According to data From the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI has been the argument for 12,304 layoffs so far in 2026, the equivalent of 8% of all layoffs recorded in that same period.
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