The process of laying off employees has been carried out by several major technology companies since last year, using the excuse that artificial intelligence (AI) can replace human workers. Meta, which previously said that it would lay off 8,000 employees on May 20, has now confirmed that the workforce reduction process will be carried out through a memo distributed according to a Bloomberg report.
In addition to laying off 8,000 employees, Meta will also not fill 6,000 vacancies at the company. Like most technology companies, AI is the reason for the layoffs to cover the cost of building data centers and tasks that can be replaced by automation. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year that 2026 would be the company's "year of efficiency."
Earlier this year, Meta was expected to lay off employees involved in the world of metamesta and mixed reality headsets. Although the company's name was changed to Meta in 2021, AI is now the main focus of the company and no longer metamesta. The XR game development studio has been closed, and Meta also announced that access to Horizon Worlds using Quest will be discontinued. This plan was later canceled after receiving negative feedback from players.
Meta is set to spend tens of billions to build its latest AI model to compete with Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. But Meta's efforts have been somewhat hampered after the new model failed to meet its targets and the loss of chief researcher Yann Le Cun, who resigned to start his own company this year.
