Meta Begins Cutting 8,000 Jobs in Sweeping AI Pivot

A Workforce Reshaped by AI

Meta has begun informing thousands of employees that their roles have been made redundant, marking the first wave of a major restructuring that combines significant workforce cuts with an aggressive push into artificial intelligence. The redundancies affect roughly 8,000 people, or around 10% of the company's global workforce, and were communicated to staff in an internal memo from Chief People Officer Janelle Gale. Employees in North America were asked to work from home on the day notifications were sent.

Reassignments and New AI Divisions

Beyond the cuts, Meta is reassigning approximately 7,000 workers to four newly formed AI-focused divisions, tasked with building AI tools and applications central to the company's strategy. Managerial layers are also being flattened, and 6,000 open positions have been scrapped entirely. Taken together, the layoffs and transfers touch roughly 20% of Meta's workforce, with company leaders signalling that additional reductions are planned for the second half of 2026.

A Massive Spending Surge

The job cuts come as Meta dramatically increases spending on AI infrastructure. During its first-quarter earnings report, the company raised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to between $125 billion and $145 billion, up from a prior range of $115 billion to $135 billion. Meta attributed the increase to higher memory component prices and additional data centre costs. The new figure nearly doubles the $72.2 billion the company spent in 2025, underlining a structural bet that AI capacity is now the company's primary growth lever.

LinkedIn Joins the Cuts

LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is also trimming its workforce. The professional networking platform filed a WARN notice indicating that 606 employees in California were informed of permanent redundancies, effective 13 July. The total reduction could reach around 5% of LinkedIn's 17,500-strong workforce. CEO Daniel Shapero said in an internal memo that the company would also scale back spending on marketing, vendor contracts, and underutilised office space, though sources indicated the cuts were not driven by AI replacing roles directly.

A Wider Industry Pattern

The tech sector has now shed more than 100,000 jobs in 2026, even as companies pour record sums into AI infrastructure. The contrast captures the defining tension of the moment: aggressive consolidation of human headcount on one side, and unprecedented investment in computing capacity on the other. For Meta, the message to staff and shareholders alike is that the company is reshaping itself, organisation by organisation, around a future where AI sits at the centre of every product decision.