Meta begins laying off 8,000 staff in AI overhaul, with Singapore notified first

Meta has begun notifying roughly 8,000 employees worldwide that they are being laid off, in what the company has described as a restructuring intended to improve efficiency and free up resources for artificial intelligence investment.

The first notifications went out in Singapore at 4am local time on Wednesday, 20 May 2026, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Workers in Britain, the United States and other markets were due to be alerted in the early hours of their respective time zones.

Staff have been encouraged to work from home as the company carries out the cuts, which are expected to affect engineering and product teams in particular.

People familiar with the company’s plans, who spoke to Bloomberg on condition of anonymity, said additional layoffs could follow later in 2026.

Singapore staff notified first

The decision to begin notifications in Singapore meant that the company’s Asia-based employees were among the first to learn whether they had been retained, displaced or reassigned under the new structure.

Affected employees on Wednesday, 20 May 2026 were expected to receive emails with details of the layoffs and the reorganisation, with the timing of notifications varying by region, NBC News reported.

Reassignments and AI focus

In an internal memo circulated on Monday, 18 May 2026, Meta announced that around 7,000 workers would be reassigned to newly formed teams focused on AI initiatives, including products and agents.

The reassigned employees will be consolidated into four new organisations, according to a report by NBC News, citing a source familiar with the matter.

NBC News reported that the broader reorganisation also involves leaving approximately 6,000 open positions unfilled, with the combined moves affecting about 10 per cent of Meta’s workforce.

Meta employed 77,986 workers as of the end of March 2026, down from a peak of 86,482 in 2022.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s head of people, said in the 18 May memo that many parts of the company could now operate with a flatter structure built around smaller pods and cohorts.

“We’re now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership,” Gale wrote, in the memo reviewed by Bloomberg.

She added: “We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding.”

The reorganisation was first detailed in an internal memo in April 2026, which Meta confirmed to NBC News at the time.

In that earlier memo, Gale framed the cuts as part of a continued effort to “run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making”.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority, committing well in excess of US$100 billion to AI capital expenditure in 2026.

Speaking on the company’s first-quarter 2026 earnings call last month, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li said Meta was focused on using AI tools to lift productivity.

“We’re very focused on leveraging AI tools to substantially increase our productivity, and we’re seeing that reflected in the accelerating output from our engineers,” Li said.

Li added that the company would be “continuously evaluating” its structure to ensure it was set up to deliver on its priorities over the coming years.

In April 2026, Meta raised its full-year capital expenditure guidance to between US$125 billion and US$145 billion, from a previous range of US$115 billion to US$135 billion.

The company attributed the higher figure to expectations of higher component pricing and additional data centre costs to support future capacity, according to its first-quarter 2026 report.

Mounting investor concerns

Meta’s aggressive AI spending has drawn concern from some investors, who question whether the outlay will ultimately pay off.

Bloomberg reported that analysts at Evercore estimated the latest layoffs would generate only about US$3 billion in savings.

That figure is a small fraction of Meta’s projected 2026 capital expenditure, which could reach US$145 billion, with hundreds of billions more in AI infrastructure spending anticipated before the end of the decade.

Meta’s shares are down nearly 9 per cent so far this year, placing the company fifth among the so-called Magnificent 7 technology firms for year-to-date growth, ahead only of Tesla and Microsoft.

The stock has slumped by nearly 10 per cent since the company reported its first-quarter results at the end of April 2026.

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase downgraded Meta shares after the first-quarter results, saying the company faced “a more challenging path to returns” compared with its rivals in the AI race.

At Bank of America, analysts warned that Meta’s strategy might not be “sustainable long-term”, noting that the company was investing more in AI capacity while cutting headcount to make room for added expenses.

“This AI investment cycle is proving to be bigger than expected, and returns are less clear vs Cloud providers,” the Bank of America analysts said.

Pattern of restructuring

The latest cuts continue a pattern of restructuring at Meta in recent years, as Zuckerberg has pushed for greater efficiency across the company, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

NBC News reported that Meta laid off hundreds of employees in March 2026, in a reorganisation that affected at least five departments, including the Reality Labs virtual reality unit, Facebook social teams, sales, recruiting and global operations.

Zuckerberg has urged engineers to use AI agents to assist with coding and other tasks. He has also outlined plans to track employees’ devices to help train Meta’s AI systems.

Bloomberg reported that the chief executive has spent time coding his own AI-powered assistant to help him handle some of his duties, such as soliciting employee feedback.

Staff frustration

The changes have unsettled parts of Meta’s workforce.

More than 1,000 employees have signed a petition addressed to Zuckerberg and other leaders, demanding the company refrain from collecting data from their devices to train AI.

According to Bloomberg, that data collection can extend to keystrokes, mouse movements and screen content.

Other staff have taken to social media to describe how the threat of further layoffs has affected their morale and day-to-day work.

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