MetaPlatforms e ecosystem They have decided to offset the massive spending on artificial intelligence by planning staff cuts or organizing redundancy programs that could affect up to 23.000 jobs. The same path had previously been adopted by Oracle infrastructures .
Meta plans to lay off 8.000 workers with a generous severance package starting May 20th.
Meta Yesterday, he wrote an internal memo to employees announcing that next month he will cut 10% of his staff, or about 8.000 jobs, to offset the massive spending on artificial intelligence wanted by the CEO. Mark ZuckerbergThe $1.700 trillion social media group said the layoffs were needed to “run the company more efficiently and… offset other investments we're making.” It also said would no longer cover the 6.000 positions for which he had planned hiring, according to two sources, reports Reuters.
Zuckerberg has startedultra-billion dollar expenses for the infrastructure for artificial intelligence, including a fleet of expensive data center, And for to acquire high-level talent to try to make up ground on rivals such as Google and OpenAI in the race to create cutting-edge models. Last January Meta had stated that capital expenditures would nearly double to $135 billion this year. Investor concerns about these expenditures weighed on the company's stock price. Zuckerberg has focused Meta's AI strategy on developing what he calls “personal superintelligence”. This month, the company launched a new model of artificial intelligence, Muse Spark, which the company says was “purpose-built” for use across all its products, including the Meta AI chatbot, although the company acknowledged that the new model lags behind more advanced competitor tools and assured that it will make further improvements this year. Meta also announced a new data center project for artificial intelligence, called “Meta Compute”, with the goal of building “tens of gigawatts this decade and hundreds of gigawatts or more.” Building a single gigawatt of data center capacity costs tens of billions of dollars.
Janelle Gale, Meta's chief human resources officer, said that the layoffs will take place on 20st May and that the affected employees will receive “a generous severance package”, including 18 months of health care coverage for U.S. employees. Employees, already upset by yesterday's news, also had to digest the news from the past few days regarding the'installing a software company-wide tracking that can record employee mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, and screen content to train AI models. The data will help Meta build AI agents able carry out work tasks independently, making people less necessary.
Microsoft: Early retirement incentives. 8.750 people are eligible.
The ecosystem is moving along the same path, albeit with different methods. Meta's major rival, in a note to US employees, said it would offer 7% of them the opportunity to participate in voluntary early retirement programs, Bloomberg reported, adding that this is the first time Microsoft has made such an announcement.
As of June 2025, the company had 125.000 employees in the United States. This would mean that around 8.750 workers would be eligible for the program. Eligible employees include those with combined years of service and age equal to or greater than 70, excluding certain management roles or those receiving sales incentives, according to the memo signed by Human Resources Chief Amy Coleman. "Our hope is that this program offers those who qualify the opportunity to take the next step with the generous support of the company," Coleman wrote. Microsoft has implemented mass layoffs, which have occurred in waves since early 2023.
Microsoft is also engaged in a race against time to build data centers around the worldLast Thursday Microsoft announced that will invest 18 billion dollars in infrastructure and cloud for artificial intelligence in Australia, its largest investment ever in the country, after having already allocated 10 billion dollars over four years for AI in Japan.
