Meta is laying off several hundred employees today — fewer than 1,000 in total, but spread across five different parts of the company simultaneously. The cuts hit Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations, recruiting, and sales.
According to Reuters, Meta is framing the cuts as routine restructuring. Some affected employees are being offered alternative roles within the company — though in certain cases, those new positions come with a relocation requirement.
Meta Layoffs Keep Coming Even as AI Spending Hits Record Highs
This is the second wave of cuts Meta has executed in 2026. In January, the company laid off more than 1,000 people, with roughly 10% of the Reality Labs unit wiped out in that round alone. Today’s cuts hit Reality Labs again — meaning VR and AR have now absorbed two separate reductions inside three months.
Meta is simultaneously committing to what may be the largest AI capital expenditure in corporate history. We reported earlier this month that the company was weighing cuts of up to 20% of its 79,000-person workforce specifically to fund AI datacenter buildout. The current layoffs are smaller than that, but they fit the same logic: headcount as a budget line item to be traded against infrastructure.
The five divisions being cut aren’t random. Recruiting getting trimmed signals Meta doesn’t plan to backfill these roles — or many others — anytime soon. Sales cuts suggest pressure on ad revenue targets even as the platform remains dominant. And Reality Labs taking a second hit in 90 days raises real questions about how much runway the metaverse bet has left inside Menlo Park.
Mark Zuckerberg has been explicit that 2026 is a year of aggressive AI investment. What’s becoming equally clear is that the people funding that investment aren’t outside shareholders — they’re employees, absorbed into a reallocation the company calls restructuring and the people holding boxes call something else entirely.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
