Social media giant Meta on Thursday said it will lay off about 8,000 employees — roughly 10% of its workforce — as it reallocates resources to scale up development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. In an internal memo, the company said the first round of cuts is scheduled for May 20 and that about 6,000 additional roles will be left unfilled.
Also on Thursday, US media reported that Microsoft plans to offer voluntary early retirement buyouts to around 8,700 workers, approximately 7% of its staff.
Both moves come as the companies accelerate investment in AI. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has outlined plans to build “personal superintelligence,” AI agents tailored to individual users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in July 2025: “Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful. Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices.”
Meta has warned investors that infrastructure costs and hiring AI experts could push expenses as high as $169 billion in 2026. Microsoft is investing billions to expand a global network of data centers that underpin cloud computing and AI services such as Copilot. Investor concerns about the costs and eventual profitability of data centers have weighed on Microsoft’s share price over the past six months. The early retirement buyout program is a first for the company founded in 1975.
Edited by: Karl Sexton