Affected employees received severance emails and lost system access within an hour.
Laid-off US employees will get 16 weeks' salary plus two weeks per year of service.
Meta’s AI investment has grown by over 50%, reaching $65 billion in 2025.
After announcing plans to lay off several low-performing plans, Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta began laying off thousands of employees on Monday, the Bloomberg report stated. According to reports, the company has sent emails to both personal and professional email addresses of affected employees informing them about the severance packages and that they will be unable to access Meta systems after one hour of notifying.
SurveyPreviously, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted that approximately 5% of the Meta workforce, or 3,600 employees, would be affected, and the majority of them were not performing up to the company’s expectations. With this, the company hopes to make more space for hiring top AI talent. According to reports, the company has been restructuring teams with a strong focus on AI in order to increase investment in artificial intelligence.
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Employees who are laid off in the United States will receive severance packages that include 16 weeks of salary, plus an additional two weeks for each year of service. Those who received bonuses during the current review period, as well as stock awards, will receive them within the month.
This is not the first time the company has fired thousands of workers. Previously, the social media giant laid off thousands of employees in 2022 and 2023 as part of a productivity push. This time, the parent company of Facebook appears to be moving strategically, with a particular emphasis on AI growth. The company is firing the less essential roles and will prioritise AI engineers and researchers to do the job, the report stated.
Previously, Meta announced that it would be investing over $65 billion in AI development which is over 50% more budget compared to last year. For the unversed, the company spent $38–$40 billion on AI in 2024, a Reuters report stated.
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Ashish Singh
Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile
