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While Meta plans to transfer workers to positions in artificial intelligence, the company is also in the process of conducting a huge firing drive, which will leave thousands more without a job, thus showing how the operations of the tech company are about to change radically.
A wider layoff wave is threatening to engulf the company’s global workforce, but in a wide-ranging internal memo seen by Reuters, Meta’s Chief People Officer Janelle Gale announced that about 7,000 people will be relocated to new projects focused on artificial intelligence.
What the Internal Memo Revealed
The memo, which was sent to employees on Monday, explained a large-scale restructuring of Meta AI, one that is much more than a mere headcount cut. Gale states that the company plans to remove managerial levels, rearchitect teams and organisations around “AI native design principles.”
“Many organisations today are working in a flatter hierarchy with fewer pods and cohorts that can get things done faster and with more accountability,” Gale wrote, Reuters reported.
The announcement on Wednesday of the Meta layoff will result in around a 10% reduction in the company’s workforce, though there will be further deep cuts later in 2026. That, along with transfers and role eliminations, will impact approximately 20% of Meta’s global workforce, which ended at 77,986 at the end of March 2026.
Where Are the 7,000 Workers Going?
The Meta staff reshuffle involves assigning workers to new or expanded AI teams announced by the company. Key destinations include:
- Applied AI Engineering (AAI): applied to create an AI agent that could do what human staff do now.
- Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA) XFN: a cross-functional team that is leading this transformation.
- Central Analytics: designed to measure productivity and performance with the increased role of AI agents in operations
- Enterprise Solutions: information about this initiative will be coming soon.
AI initiatives like both AAI and ATA were already announced earlier this year by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth as part of the internal transformation of AI. That’s a pivotal shift: In these Meta AI roles, the company aims to redirect some of its employees to develop and manage the very AI that could drive the replacement of others.
A Larger Trend of AI-Powered Layoffs
The decision of Meta is happening against the backdrop of growing layoffs in the US tech industry fueled by AI. It’s not about trimming their budget, but actually shrinking their workforce in pursuit of filling the positions created due to the application of AI, even those that could hardly be replaced by AI in the first place.
Meta has also shut down an extra 6,000 jobs in the restructuring, indicating that even unfilled jobs are going by the wayside when AI alternatives are considered adequate.
Rather than a layoff, the Meta 2026 cycle is marketed internally as a “reinvention”, which has been less effective at calming employees’ nerves.
Employee Backlash and Internal Dissent
The restructuring update from Meta has become the rare time in the company’s existence that there has been any open criticism. Over a thousand staffers have signed a petition opposing the deployment of the mouse-tracking software, which Meta is hoping to employ to learn how human beings interact with computers to build AI models. The workers have also been plastering their offices with protest posters and criticising on the internal platform of Meta, Workplace.
Similarly, for weeks after the Reuters report first emerged with the announcement of the Meta job cuts, workers reacted to messages from the leadership with elephant pictures, which is a reference to the so-called “elephant in the room” that leadership had ignored.
The Bigger Picture: Meta’s AI Bet
The size of the Meta AI expansion is a testament to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s faith that AI agents will play a bigger role in the company’s products and operations in the near future. The Meta layoff doesn’t mean that the company is backing off — it’s reallocating resources to better prepare for the future in which a lot fewer human employees are required to perform the same volume of labour.
The memo doesn’t answer that question, of course, given that it is about how the future will be for the workers displaced in the transition.
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