Exclusive: Meta planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount [View all]

Source: Reuters

Meta is planning sweeping layoffs ​that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as ‌Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.

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Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to ​compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over ​four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.

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Meta's planned AI investments follow a series of setbacks with its Llama 4 models last year, including criticism that it provided misleading results on the benchmarks it used for early versions. It abandoned the release of the largest version of ⁠that model, ​called Behemoth, which had been due out in the summer.

The superintelligence team has ​been working to reassert the company's standing this year by building a new model called Avocado, but the performance of that model has also lagged expectations.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning-sweeping-layoffs-ai-costs-mount-2026-03-14/