Meta president Dina Powell McCormick discusses AI innovation, potential threats, and details the new Muse Spark platform model on ‘Mornings with Maria.’
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday that the company’s latest round of layoffs is related to increased spending on artificial intelligence, while leaving the door open to more job cuts.
Zuckerberg said this during a company hall address, the first time he has spoken to employees since Meta confirmed plans to cut around 8,000 jobs – about 10% of its workforce.
The layoffs, expected to begin May 20, come as the company ramps up investments in AI and infrastructure, FOX Business previously reported.
“We actually have two major cost centers in the company: computing infrastructure and people-centric things,” Zuckerberg said, according to Reuters.
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Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the company’s recent layoffs were related to spending more on artificial intelligence. (Photos by Alex Wong / Getty Images)
“If we invest a lot in one area to serve our community, that means we have less money to allocate to another,” he added. “So that means we need to downsize the company somehow.”
Zuckerberg said the cuts are not related to Meta’s shift to an “AI” architecture or efforts to build autonomous AI agents.
“Getting everyone internally to use AI tools and get work done effectively is not what causes layoffs,” he said.
| A ticker | Security | Finally | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| META | META PLATFORMS INC. | 611.91 | -57.21 |
-8.55% |
Still, Zuckerberg refused to rule out further job cuts.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is cutting jobs as it ramps up investment in artificial intelligence. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
“We’ll see how all these things go,” he said, adding that the company “will be able to share more soon.”
“I wish I could tell you that I have a crystal ball plan for, like, three years into the future of how all this stuff is going to play out,” he said. “I don’t want to. I don’t think you’re doing anything.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has also started tracking employee activity – including clicks, shortcuts and how employees navigate apps – as part of efforts to train its AI systems.
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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., appears during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on September 17, 2025. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Reuters reported that layoffs and surveillance efforts have sparked internal criticism, with employees voicing concerns on company message boards.
Meta referred FOX Business to comments from CFO Susan Li, who said during the earnings call that the company’s long-term size remains uncertain.
“We don’t really know what the perfect size of a company will be in the future,” Li said, citing rapid changes in AI capabilities.
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Meta previously cut 11,000 jobs by November 2022 and another 10,000 months later. The company employed nearly 79,000 people as of Dec. 31, according to its most recent filing.
FOX Business’ Louis Casiano and Reuters contributed to this report.
