Inside Meta’s brutal math: $145B in AI spending, 8,000 more jobs cut

When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized in late 2022 for over-hiring during the pandemic, the company was cutting 11,000 jobs. That number eventually hit 21,000. Now, with the latest round starting this week, the tone has shifted. There’s no apology. Just a memo saying the cuts—roughly 8,000 positions, plus scrapping 6,000 open roles—are needed to offset investments elsewhere.

Those investments are massive. Meta raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance by $10 billion last month, pushing it to $145 billion. Most of that goes to AI infrastructure. Meanwhile, the company has already cut 1,000 workers from Reality Labs and hundreds more in March, while moving away from third-party content moderation vendors.

Internally, employees describe a growing sense of dread. More cuts are expected in August and later this year, according to current and former staff. CFO Susan Li told analysts the company doesn’t know its optimal size, adding that Meta keeps underestimating its AI compute needs.

Across the industry, the pattern is clear: tech stocks and AI startups soar, while headcounts shrink. Layoffs.fyi reports nearly 110,000 tech job cuts in 2026, on pace to approach 2023’s peak of 260,000. Cisco just cut fewer than 4,000 jobs; its stock jumped 13%.

Umesh Ramakrishnan of Kingsley Gate says investors reward AI-driven efficiency. “Now the world understands jobs are being replaced by machines,” he said. “If you’re not doing that, shareholders get upset.”

Inside Meta, anxiety runs deeper. The company recently rolled out a tool called MCI that tracks employee mouse movements and keystrokes to train AI agents. Workers call it “dystopian” and started a petition to shut it down. Meta’s ratings on Blind have dropped 25% from a mid-2024 peak, with culture scores falling 39%. In every category except compensation, Meta trails Amazon, Google, and Netflix.

Leo Boussioux, a professor at the University of Washington, sees this as a broader trend: companies using AI threats and layoffs to force cultural change—or just managing poorly. Either way, Meta’s workforce is feeling the squeeze.