Overview
- Meta, which disclosed the plan in a Thursday memo, set May 20 for email notifications to employees whose roles will be eliminated.
- U.S. severance terms include 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for every year at the company and 18 months of COBRA health coverage.
- Executives linked the reductions to a costly AI buildout, with guidance citing total 2026 expenses of about $162 billion to $169 billion tied to data centers and hiring AI specialists.
- The company has begun a Model Capability Initiative that records keystrokes and mouse clicks on work devices to gather training data for AI agents, raising privacy questions reported by multiple outlets.
- Microsoft is taking a different route in the same retooling of workforces for AI by offering voluntary buyouts to roughly 7% of its U.S. employees.