Saed News: Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced in an internal meeting with employees that the layoff of around 8,000 staff members is due to increased investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
According to SAEDNEWS, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, told employees in an internal meeting that the reduction of about 8,000 workers will take place because of rising investment in AI infrastructure.
According to Forbes, this new wave of layoffs affects around 10% of Meta’s workforce and is set to begin on May 20 (May 30 in the Iranian calendar). The news also comes in the same week that Meta increased its projected capital expenditure for 2026 from the previous range of $115–135 billion to $125–145 billion.
Zuckerberg said in the meeting: “We essentially have two main cost drivers in the company: compute infrastructure and people-related expenses.”
He explained that by allocating more capital to AI hardware, fewer resources remain for maintaining staff. The Meta CEO also did not rule out further layoffs later in the year. In 2025, Meta spent about $72.2 billion in capital expenditures (CapEx).
Despite the timing of the decision, some reports suggest that Meta was not necessarily forced into layoffs due to financial pressure. The company’s Q1 2026 financial statements show revenue of $56.31 billion, a 33% increase compared to the same period last year, and net profit of $26.8 billion.
Zuckerberg has been more explicit than many other CEOs, directly naming infrastructure costs as the main reason.
In related comments, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at the India AI Impact Summit in February that some companies engage in “AI washing”—using artificial intelligence as a justification for layoffs or other decisions in a misleading or exaggerated way.
