Meta is pulling thousands of staffers into its AI future, all while cutting thousands more. In a Monday memo, HR chief Janelle Gale told employees that about 7,000 workers will be reassigned into four newly created artificial intelligence groups aimed at building tools and apps using "AI native design structures" with leaner management layers, reports the New York Times. The reshuffle comes just ahead of layoffs affecting 8,000 or so people, or about 10% of Meta's 78,000-plus workforce, set to hit on Wednesday. Employees were told to work from home as notices go out at 4am local time. US workers who are laid off will receive at least 16 weeks of severance, plus two extra weeks per year of service.
The overhaul underscores CEO Mark Zuckerberg's shift away from the metaverse and toward AI, where Meta is spending up to $135 billion this year on data centers and development to compete with players like Google and OpenAI. In fact, 2026 is expected to be when "AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work," Zuckerberg said earlier this year, per the AP. The company has begun grading employees partly on how they use AI in their jobs, even as a recent policy on training AI with worker data sparked internal backlash, with the Wall Street Journal calling its push into the AI arena "unusually aggressive, even by the standards of Silicon Valley." Tech peers like Cisco, Microsoft, Block, and Coinbase have recently announced AI-driven restructurings of their own, per the Times.
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