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Meta plans fresh round of layoffs, to move 7,000 staff to AI projects

Samira Vishwas | May 19, 2026 6:25 PM CST

As part of its ongoing restructuring efforts, Meta is planning another round of layoffs this week. In a memo shared with employees on Monday, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company detailed plans for global workforce cuts alongside organisational changes aimed at improving its AI workflows.

According to the memo, accessed by Reuters, Janelle Gale, Meta’s Chief People Officer, told employees that the company plans to move about 7,000 workers to new projects to AI workflows cutting down managerial roles. Gale added that many leaders would also announce organisational changes.

The new initiatives, as mentioned by Gale, where employees will be transferred, include Applied EI Engineering (AAI) and Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN and two other teams that were earlier announced by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth.

“As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI-native design principles ⁠into their new org structures. We’re now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership,” read the memo.

Reportedly, the Facebook parent is planning to lay off 10 per cent of its staff on Wednesday, May 20, with additional job cuts scheduled for later this year.

The latest announcements are part of Meta’s massive overhaul planned for this year. The company is accelerating its investments in AI. Last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed the planned layoffs to increased capital spending for AI. He declined to rule out further cuts back then. “We basically have two major cost centres in the company: compute infrastructure and people-oriented things,” Zuckerberg said to employees at a company town hall meeting.

The layoffs by Meta signal a wider pattern in the industry that is currently witnessing massive AI-linked job cuts. Apart from the layoffs, the company had also closed an additional 6,000 open roles as part of the process. As of the end of March, Meta employed 77,986 people, based on company filings.