A number of major tech companies have been laying off workers since last year, citing the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to replace human workers. Meta will now lay off 8,000 employees on May 20, according to a Reuters report.
According to insiders, this is just the first wave of layoffs that Meta will make this year. In H2 2026, they will lay off more employees with the goal of cutting up to 20% of their global workforce throughout 2026.
Earlier this year, Meta was expected to lay off employees involved in the world of metamesta and mixed reality headsets. Although the company 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.
Tens of billions will be spent by Meta to build their latest AI models to compete with Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. But Meta's efforts were slightly 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.
