The company began the process on Wednesday morning, starting with staff in Asia.

Workers in Singapore received the first emails at around 4 a.m. local time, while employees in the United States and other regions are expected to hear later in the day.

People familiar with the plans said the notifications will roll out in stages across time zones.

Meta has asked many of those affected to work from home while the process continues. The cuts are part of a restructuring as the company moves more resources into artificial intelligence and reduces costs elsewhere in the business.

The reductions are expected to hit engineering and product teams the most. Some staff were told earlier that further changes could follow later in the year, depending on how the restructuring progresses.

At the same time, Meta has moved about 7,000 employees into newly formed teams focused on AI work, including product development and autonomous systems. The company ended March with just under 80,000 employees before these latest changes took effect.

In an internal memo, Meta’s Head of People, Janelle Gale, said the company is moving towards a flatter structure.

“We’re now at the stage where many orgs can operate with a flatter structure with smaller teams of pods/cohorts that can move faster and with more ownership.”

“We believe this will make us more productive and make the work more rewarding,” she said.

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence the company’s main priority.

Meta has committed more than $100 billion in capital spending this year on AI infrastructure and related projects, as it tries to keep pace with competitors including Google and OpenAI.

The company has already carried out several rounds of layoffs in recent years as part of an efficiency stimulation. It has also encouraged staff to use AI tools in daily work, including coding and internal systems automation.

Inside the company, the changes have created unease. Some employees have complained about job security and the direction of internal AI projects.

More than 1,000 staff members signed a petition asking the company to avoid extensive data collection from employee devices for AI training, including inputs such as keystrokes, mouse movement and screen activity.

“Automators like Meta risk no longer being an employer of choice as it’s being revealed that they will cut out the human when the opportunity presents itself,” said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, professor of economics and behavioural science at University of Oxford.

“Doing so might well lead to short-term cost savings but risks longer-term growth potential by undermining employee wellbeing and engagement.”

Investor considerations have also grown around the scale of Meta’s AI spending and whether it will deliver returns.

While the company describes the job cuts as a way to offset the cost of its AI expansion and restructuring, analysts at Evercore estimate the layoffs could generate about $3 billion in savings for Meta.

That figure is small compared with its bigger investment plans, and capital expenditure could reach about $145 billion this year, with expectations of further heavy spending on AI infrastructure over the coming years.

The post Meta Lays Off 8,000 Employees as It Begins AI Restructuring Across Global Operations appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The announcement adds options to a product line that has gained ground in a market where many AI gadgets have found it difficult to stay resilient.

This time, the company is targeting everyday users who rely on glasses, not just early adopters.

Speaking earlier this year, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said, “billions of people wear glasses or contacts for vision correction.” That point sits at the centre of Meta’s latest move, wanting smart eyewear to feel normal, not experimental.

The new models come in two styles, rectangular and rounded, and will be sold through regular eyewear channels. There is no display built into the lenses. Instead, the glasses rely on voice and audio, supported by a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR chipset.

Users can expect features such as real-time object recognition and location awareness. Meta has also improved the microphones and extended battery life, addressing some of the early complaints about performance.

The glasses are being developed with EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban. That partnership continues to give Meta access to a well-known fashion brand, which has helped the product blend into everyday use.

Smart glasses have turned into one of the few areas where AI hardware is finding some traction. While other devices have struggled to prove their usefulness, Meta’s approach leans on something people already wear.

Still, competition is building. Apple is said to be working on its own augmented reality glasses, although its focus remains on the Vision Pro headset for now. Snap has its Spectacles, but adoption has been limited.

Meta’s edge, for now, is the mix of familiar design and added function. In adding prescription support, the company is making a case for daily use rather than occasional novelty.

Pricing has not been confirmed, though earlier versions of the Ray-Ban Meta glasses sold between $299 and $379, suggesting a similar range.

There are still questions around features that recognise objects and capture audio and how data is collected and used. Meta has not given new details on that front with this launch.

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A source familiar with the matter said the job cuts were carried out on Wednesday and affected units including Reality Labs, social media teams and recruiting.

The scale is smaller than earlier plans, but it follows internal discussions about deeper reductions.

Earlier in the month, Reuters reported that Meta had considered larger layoffs that could affect 20% or more of its workforce. Those plans have not been fully carried out, but they are still part of longer-term restructuring discuss.

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said, “Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals. Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted.”

The company employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31, according to its latest annual filing.

With these changes tied to high costs, Meta is increasing spending on artificial intelligence (AI), with total expenses projected at between $162 billion and $169 billion in 2026.

A large share of that budget will go into data centres, computing infrastructure and hiring specialised talent.

At the same time, the company is cutting back in areas that no longer sit at the centre of its plans. Reality Labs, which focuses on augmented and virtual reality, has recorded heavy losses in recent years.

Reports put those losses at about $16 billion between 2023 and 2025.

Now, attention has shifted, and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has placed artificial intelligence at the core of the business, reducing the weight previously given to AR and VR projects.

The latest layoffs also touch sales, global operations and other support roles, according to earlier reports. Some affected employees, especially outside the United States, have been offered options to move into other roles or locations.

Meta is not alone in this direction. Other large technology companies have made similar decisions, cutting jobs in hardware and cloud units while increasing investment in AI.

The post Meta Lays Off Hundreds of Staff as Spending Shifts to AI appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The new plan targets senior leaders, including Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, as the company expands its drive into artificial intelligence and tries to keep key talent.

Regulatory filings show that several top executives will now be eligible for stock options. They include the finance chief, technology chief, product chief, operating chief, president and legal chief. Most of them will also receive higher restricted stock awards, which vest over time.

The stock options come with conditions, as the lowest tranche only pays out if Meta’s share price reaches $1,116.08. That is about 88% above its latest close of $592.92. The highest tier requires the stock to climb to $3,727.12, more than six times its current level.

If the targets are not met by February 2028, the unvested options will be released gradually until August 2030. They expire in March 2031 if unused.

A company spokesperson said the package is a “big bet” and that it “will not be realised unless Meta achieves massive future success, benefiting all of our shareholders.”

This stresses how intense the competition for AI talent has become. Companies such as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are offering large pay deals to attract researchers. Meta has also been active, hiring aggressively and acquiring smaller firms to strengthen its AI teams.

In March, the company brought in Dreamer AI, a startup working on advanced AI systems, as part of its expansion into what it calls “superintelligence” research.

Spending has surged alongside hiring, with Meta reporting $72 billion in capital expenditure in 2025 and expects that figure to rise to as much as $135 billion in 2026. Much of that is tied to AI infrastructure, including data centres and computing power.

Analysts expect Meta’s stock to trade between $838 and $935 in 2026, with some forecasts going higher. Even so, the new option targets sit well above those estimates.

Executives only benefit if the company delivers exceptional growth. So, Meta is tying pay to performance, believing AI will drive that outcome.

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The decision follows years of heavy spending on virtual reality. Meta’s Reality Labs division, which builds VR headsets and smart glasses, has lost nearly $80 billion since 2020.

Last month, the company cut about 1,500 jobs in the unit, roughly 10% of its workforce. It also closed several VR game studios.

Supernatural, the VR fitness app Meta bought in 2023, will stop producing new content and move into maintenance mode.

Horizon Worlds launched in 2021 as a virtual reality social platform. It later expanded to the web and mobile. Now the company is narrowing its focus.

“To truly change the game and tap into a much larger market, we’re going all-in on mobile,” Samantha Ryan, vice president of Content at Reality Labs, wrote.

In shifting to mobile, Meta is placing Horizon Worlds in more direct competition with platforms such as Roblox and Fortnite, which already reach large audiences on phones.

Ryan said, “We’re in a strong position to deliver synchronous social games at scale, thanks to our unique ability to connect those games with billions of people on the world’s biggest social networks. You saw this strategy start to unfold in 2025, and now, it’s our main focus.”

At the same time, the company said it is not leaving virtual reality hardware. Ryan added, “We have a robust roadmap of future VR headsets that will be tailored to different audience segments as the market grows and matures.”

Meta said it will clearly separate its Quest VR platform from Horizon Worlds so each can grow independently. It plans to concentrate its VR focus on supporting third-party developers rather than expanding its own first-party studios.

According to the company, 86% of the time people spend in their VR headsets goes to third-party apps.

In 2025, Meta invested nearly $150 million in VR developer programmes, including its Start Developer Competition. It reported that in-app purchases on Quest rose 13% year on year.

Meta Horizon+ passed one million active subscribers in 2025 and now offers more than 100 games.

However, company executives admit the wider VR market has grown more slowly than expected. During last month’s earnings call, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said, “It’s hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren’t AI glasses.”

He added that sales of Meta’s glasses tripled over the past year and described them as “some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history.”

Internally, Meta has also adjusted how developers publish and sell content. It will remove individual worlds from the VR store shelves and separate worlds from the mobile app store listing.

The company said this should increase visibility for apps. It has introduced tools such as season passes, featured bundles and a “Deals” tab to improve sales and discovery.

On mobile, Meta reported growth in creator activity, noting that mobile-only worlds increased from zero to more than 2,000 in 2025. Four creators have earned more than $1 million in lifetime revenue, while nearly 100 earned six figures last year.

Meta is now putting most of its focus into building Horizon Worlds for phones while keeping its VR hardware plans in place. The company said it will do fewer projects at once and concentrate on areas it believes can grow faster.

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The report states that the feature, known internally as “Name Tag”, would allow users to identify people they are looking at and receive information about them through the company’s AI assistant. 

If approved, it would be a big step in how Meta integrates artificial intelligence into wearable devices.

Company discussions about the feature began early last year. Executives have weighed how to release a tool that carries what the report describes as “safety and privacy risks”. The final decision has not been confirmed, and plans could still change.

An internal memo quoted in the report shows that Meta once considered rolling out “Name Tag” to attendees at a conference for the visually impaired before making it widely available. That launch did not happen.

The same document also says the company has thought carefully about timing. “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” the document reads.

Meta had explored adding facial recognition to the first version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2021. At the time, the company dropped the idea, pointing to technical limits and ethical issues. 

Now, after stronger sales of its smart glasses and closer ties between technology firms and the current US administration, the proposal has returned to the table.

According to the report, Mark Zuckerberg sees facial recognition as a way to make the company’s AI assistant more useful and to distinguish its glasses from competing products.

Meta has not publicly confirmed when or if the feature will be released.

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At the centre of the case is a 19-year-old woman from California, identified in court papers as K.G.M. She argues that she became hooked on the apps while still a child and that prolonged use damaged her mental health. 

She is asking the court to hold the companies liable for the effects of their product design, not just the content she consumed.

Beyond a single dispute, the trial emphasises whether a digital product can be treated like any other consumer good when it causes harm. That question will now be argued in open court, under oath, and in front of a jury.

Lawyers for the plaintiff say this is the first time technology firms must defend themselves at trial on claims that their platforms injured a young user.

Report Links Growing Mental Health Crisis among Children to Use of Technology

Matthew Bergman, the lead attorney, said: “They will be under a level of scrutiny that does not exist when you testify in front of Congress.”

The jury must decide whether the companies were negligent, and whether use of the platforms played a role in K.G.M.’s mental health challenges, as distinct from other factors in her life or the third-party material she viewed. Legal experts say the result could influence hundreds of similar cases awaiting resolution.

“This is really a test case,” said Clay Calvert, a media lawyer at the American Enterprise Institute. “We’re going to see what happens with these theories”.

Senior executives are expected to be called. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is due to testify, an uncommon sight for a technology founder in a civil courtroom. 

Snap’s chief executive Evan Spiegel had also been expected, but Snap agreed to settle the case against it earlier this month. The company has not disclosed the terms.

The remaining firms are preparing distinct defences. Meta has said its products did not cause the plaintiff’s difficulties and mental health challenges. YouTube plans to argue that its service is different in nature from platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and should not be treated the same way. TikTok has declined to outline its courtroom strategy.

Since 2022, thousands of lawsuits across the United States have accused social media companies of deliberately designing addictive features that harm children. 

In September 2025, a California court allowed expert witnesses to explain how tools such as endless scrolling, autoplay and algorithm-driven feeds affect young users’ mental health. That ruling cleared the path for this bellwether case.

At the same time, the companies are fighting a parallel issue for public trust. They have rolled out new parental controls, funded school workshops and partnered with youth groups to show they take safety seriously. Meta has sponsored “Screen Smart” sessions in schools. 

TikTok has backed parent programmes under the banner “Create with Kindness”. Google, YouTube’s parent company, has worked with the Girl Scouts on online safety badges.

Individuals say these initiatives muddy the waters. Julie Scelfo, founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction, said: “These companies are using every lever of influence that you can imagine. It can be very confusing for parents who to trust.”

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The layoffs hit the heart of Meta’s VR gaming. Twisted Pixel Games, Sanzaru Games and Armature Studio are being closed, bringing an end to teams behind titles linked to Deadpool, Asgard’s Wrath and the VR version of Resident Evil 4. 

Work on new features and content for the Supernatural fitness app has also been stopped, although the app itself will continue to run in its current form.

This looks like a retreat as Reality Labs has lost more than $70bn since 2021, driven by heavy spending on headsets, software and in-house studios that failed to reach a mass audience. 

The latest round of cuts affects more than 1,000 roles and removes roughly one in ten staff from the division.

Several projects that never reached the public are also being scrapped. Among them are a virtual reality Harry Potter title reportedly in development and scaled-back work at Camouflaj, the studio behind Batman: Arkham Shadow. These decisions reveal how much Meta is narrowing its focus, away from the VR game studios, among other areas.

VR gaming, once described as an important pillar of the metaverse, is no longer at the centre of the plan. The company is redirecting money and talent towards artificial intelligence and augmented reality hardware, with particular emphasis on its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. 

Mark Zuckerberg has described these devices as a more realistic path to growth than fully immersive virtual worlds.

The transition is also changing how Meta courts developers. Instead of funding expensive, VR-only titles, the company is encouraging creators from platforms such as Roblox to build lighter, mobile-friendly experiences for Horizon Worlds. 

It is a move away from grand, hardware-heavy ideas towards products that can scale faster and cost less.

The metaverse vision is not gone, but it is being changed to be cheaper, and far less dependent on blockbuster virtual reality games.

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The appointment places Powell McCormick on Meta’s management team, with direct responsibility for helping drive strategy and execution at a time when the company is expanding its data centres, energy systems and connectivity projects across several regions. 

With this development, Meta is increasing its focus on capital, politics and scale as it pushes more into what it calls frontier AI and long-term computing bets.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, described the decision regarding her financial and diplomatic reach. “Dina’s experience at the highest levels of global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth as the company’s President and Vice Chairman,” he said.

Powell McCormick, not new to Meta, previously sat on the company’s board and was involved as it enhanced work on advanced AI systems. 

Her elevation comes as the cost and complexity of Meta’s vision peaks, with multi-billion-dollar investments now tied to physical assets and long-term financing rather than software alone.

Powell McCormick served as deputy national security adviser to President Donald Trump and earlier worked under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during George W. Bush’s administration. 

In the private sector, she spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs, where she was a partner, sat on the management committee and led global sovereign investment banking. 

During that period, she helped drive initiatives such as 10,000 Women, 10,000 Small Businesses and One Million Black Women, programmes aimed at long-term economic growth.

Trump publicly welcomed the appointment, posting on Truth Social: “Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!! She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction.”

Inside Meta, Powell McCormick is expected to work with infrastructure and compute teams, overseeing how large investments are deployed and how they affect host communities. She will also be tasked with building new capital partnerships to support the company’s expanding financial needs.

Just last week, Meta hired Curtis Joseph Mahoney, a former Microsoft legal executive who also served as a deputy US trade representative during Trump’s first term. Taken together, the hires point to a strategy of bringing in leaders with experience in the regulatory environment and complex global financing.

Powell McCormick’s mix of government service and banking experience gives the company a steady hand as it moves further into capital-heavy territory.

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This is one of the first big exits since Mark Zuckerberg reorganised Meta’s AI division under Superintelligence Labs.

LeCun, a Turing Award laureate and one of the pioneers of deep learning, is reportedly in early discussions with investors to raise funds for his new venture, which will centre on developing “world models”, AI systems designed to simulate and understand the real world more deeply. 

This approach aims to create machines that can learn and reason with a closer resemblance to human cognition.

His departure comes at a time when Meta is enhancing its drive to compete with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic in the superintelligent systems space.

Mark Zuckerberg recently consolidated Meta’s AI research under Superintelligence Labs, placing Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of data-labelling firm Scale AI, in charge of the division.

This reorganisation meant that LeCun, who had long reported to Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, was reassigned to report directly to Wang, a move that, according to sources cited by the Financial Times, may have influenced his decision to leave.

LeCun’s planned exit reveals both a generational change in leadership and a potential divergence in vision between academic research and the dynamic, product-driven approach of Meta AI.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has yet to comment publicly on the reports. LeCun, too, has not issued an official statement.

Since joining Meta (then Facebook) in 2013, Yann LeCun has helped in promoting convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and self-supervised learning, two techniques that underpin today’s large-scale AI systems. 

His next startup could represent a return to the more exploratory and research-oriented roots that first defined his career.

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