Overview
- Meta will notify about 8,000 employees on May 20 and will close roughly 6,000 unfilled roles as part of a plan to shrink headcount by about 10%.
- Mark Zuckerberg told staff the company is prioritizing compute infrastructure over people costs, with 2026 capital spending raised to $125–$145 billion for AI data centers and model work, and leaders signaled the long-term workforce size remains uncertain.
- Across the sector, 81,747 tech jobs were cut in Q1 2026 as firms redirected budgets to chips and data centers, with Microsoft offering voluntary buyouts to roughly 7% of its U.S. staff in the same shift.
- Employees facing the Meta cuts are set to receive severance that starts at 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks per year of service and extended health coverage, even as reports of a new activity-tracking program have fueled internal unease.
- The investment push shows up in hard infrastructure, with Google laying the foundation for a $15 billion AI data hub in Visakhapatnam, India that plans 1 GW of initial capacity and a subsea cable landing station.