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.

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.