Meta: AI at Heart of Tech Giant's Bold Restructure

Meta employees are bracing for drastic organisational changes, with the company planning for another round of massive layoffs. 

The tech giant is slashing human labour in its thousands, with Reuters reporting a 10% workforce reduction effective Wednesday (20 May). This number is approximated at around 8,000. 

Following the global layoffs, Meta is expected to bring sweeping changes to improve its AI workflows, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

“As org leaders worked on the changes, many of them incorporated AI native ​design principles into ​their new ⁠org structures,” says Janelle Gale, Chief People Officer at Meta, in the memo. 

“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. We believe this will make us more productive and make ⁠the ​work more rewarding.”

Meta has additional layoffs planned for later in the year. 

AI restructuring and hiring freeze

The job cuts form part of an agentic AI revolution, as big tech invests billions into AI compute. Meta has a planned cap ex of up to US$135bn in 2026 – double its 2025 expenditure. 

The AI and social media giant, has plans to move about 7,000 employees into new AI initiatives, while many managerial roles are to be eliminated. Around a fifth of Meta’s global workforce will be affected by layoffs and transfers. 

The company has closed 6,000 previously open roles – all part of the mega AI overhaul, which has already claimed tens of thousands of jobs at Meta. 

Meta has laid off roughly 25,000 employees in the last four years, a Wired report notes. 

Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 2026 will be “the year that AI dramatically changes the way we work," adding that projects that used to involve big teams are now being accomplished by “a single, very talented person”.

Big tech job cuts

Countless tech giants have slashed jobs in favour of AI-backed restructuring in recent months. 

Amazon, Oracle, Block, Microsoft, Cisco and Google have all cut jobs and slowed hiring as big tech companies redirect spending towards AI infrastructure.

Oracle has plans to lay off thousands of employees, with analysis from TD Cowan suggesting between 20,000 and 30,000 job cuts over the coming months. 

Salesforce announced in 2025 that the company would halt hiring software engineers, attributing the decision to productivity improvements from AI tools in development workflows. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has described agentic AI as “a new labour model, new productivity model and a new economic model". 

Atlassian has also announced plans to cut 10% of its employees, with AI changing how the company operates and the skills it needs for the future workforce.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, says: “It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”

Rising employee unrest

In addition to fears surrounding mass layoffs, Meta employees have also expressed concern about a new tool: Model Capability Initiative (MCI).

MCI, which will run on computers and internal apps, is used to log worker activities including keystrokes, mouse movements and even occasional screenshots being recorded. 

Reuters notes that more than a thousand employees have signed a petition against the installation of tracking software, which they call “dystopian”.