Meta could lay off as many as 15,800 employees
Meta’s latest filings from the end of 2025 show headcount at 79,000. A 20% cut to the payroll would result in the loss of 15,800 jobs. If Meta does eliminate that many employees, it would be the company’s largest workforce reduction since it laid off more than 21,000 employees during Meta’s restructuring in 2022-2023. That period was called “The year of efficiency,” by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
The company told Reuters that earlier reports referencing layoffs at Meta as high as 20% were “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.” The rumored layoffs are not taking place in a vacuum. Meta plans on spending a whopping $600 billion on AI Data Center infrastructure by 2028 and is offering lucrative contract packages in an attempt to hire away top AI researchers for a new superintelligence team.
Other tech firms have been doing the same thing. In February, financial tech firm Block eliminated half of its workforce as CEO Jack Dorsey said that AI tools help companies stay in business with a much smaller number of workers. Meta shares declined during Friday’s regular trading session by $24.47 or 3.83% to $613.71. In after hours trading, the shares declined an additional $2.75 or .45% to $610.96. That places Meta closer to its 52-week high of $796.25 than its 52-week low of $479.80.
Meta-owned Threads set a record as the fastest growing consumer app on record
As of the current month, Threads has over 450 million users. This makes it a legitimate thread to “X whch has 550 milliion to 600 users.” In fact, on mobile platforms, Threads has surpassed X in the number of daily active users each platform attracts. In January 2026, X had 125 million DAU compared to Threads’ 141.5 million.
Zuckerberg said that he changed the name of the company because continuing to call it Facebook was not a valid reflection of what the company now does.
