Overview
- At a Thursday town hall, Mark Zuckerberg said the roughly 8,000 layoffs starting May 20 stem from rising costs for AI compute and data centers, and he did not rule out more cuts later this year.
- Following Wednesday’s earnings report, Meta raised its 2026 capital spending plan to $125 billion to $145 billion, citing higher chip and component prices and additional data-center buildouts to add future capacity.
- Meta’s shares fell as much as 10% after the spending update even as first‑quarter revenue rose 33% to about $56.3 billion and profit beat expectations.
- Reports say Meta has installed tracking software on U.S. employee devices to log mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes to train work‑task AI agents, a move that has drawn internal criticism.
- Meta warned that youth‑safety lawsuits in the U.S. and regulatory actions in the EU could lead to a material loss, adding legal risk on top of investor and employee concern about the AI pivot.