Mark Zuckerberg is getting candid about why thousands are losing their jobs at Meta, and he is not closing the door on more cuts.
During a recent internal meeting, Zuckerberg said the company’s latest layoffs come down to one thing: shifting priorities at Meta. Roughly 10% of the workforce, about 8,000 employees, are being cut as the company leans harder into artificial intelligence and infrastructure.
According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg broke it down in direct terms. “We [basically] have two cost centers in the company,” he said, pointing to compute power like GPUs and chips, along with data centers. “There’s [compute and infrastructure] and there’s people-oriented things, and if we’re investing more in one area to serve our community, then that means that we have less capital to basically allocate to the other.”
“So that means that we do need to take down the size of the company somewhat,” he added.
But that is not the only pressure point. Zuckerberg also tied the slowdown to broader economic strain linked to the U.S. war in Iran, which has impacted ad spending and overall revenue flow.
At the same time, he made it clear that AI is already reshaping how work gets done inside Meta.
“If a team used to take 50 or 100 people and now it takes 10—having 50 or 100 people on that team can actually be counterproductive going forward. So I think we need to fix that,” Zuckerberg said.
That framing signals something bigger than a one-time layoff. It suggests a structural shift where fewer employees are needed as AI takes over more functions.
Inside the company, that reality is hitting morale. Data from Blind shows negative sentiment about Meta has surged since 2024, reflecting growing anxiety among workers watching the company rapidly change direction.
Zuckerberg did not explicitly announce more layoffs, but he did not rule them out either. And with AI spending still ramping up, the message landed clearly for employees. This reset may not be finished.
