Meta will eliminate about 8000 employees, or 10 per cent of its global workforce, the social media giant confirmed on Friday, as the company strips costs to fund a record artificial intelligence investment program that is already reshaping operations in Australia.
The company disclosed the move in an internal memo from chief people officer Janelle Gale, telling staff the cuts would begin on May 20 and that Meta would also not fill 6000 open roles for which it had intended to hire.
In Australia, Meta’s local workforce – concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne across advertising sales, public policy and regulatory affairs – has already experienced an initial wave of redundancies. According to advertising industry publication B&T, about a dozen sales executives have been made redundant this year following the departure of long-serving Australia and New Zealand advertising chief Naomi Shepherd.
Meta did not respond to questions about the number of Australian roles that will be affected by the announcement.
The global cuts are being driven by a mammoth capital expenditure program of between $US115 billion and $US135 billion ($161.2 billion) this year, almost entirely directed at AI infrastructure. The company spent $US72.2 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, a figure that is expected to climb significantly in 2026, and the workforce reductions will help Meta transfer labour costs into data centres and foundational AI models.
“We’re doing this as part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making,” Gale wrote in the memo. “This is not an easy trade-off and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here.”
Friday’s announcement follows a series of smaller rounds of cuts earlier this year. In March, hundreds of employees across Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations and sales were made redundant. Meta also announced it would shift away from third-party vendors and contractors who have historically handled content moderation tasks, in favour of AI systems. In Australia, that shift has implications for local fact-checking organisations including AAP FactCheck and RMIT FactLab, which have held contracts with Meta to provide localised content review.
The decision to accelerate AI deployment inside Meta’s own operations was flagged by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg at the start of the year. “[This is] the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work,” he said on a January earnings call, adding: “We’re starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives welcomed Meta’s cuts in a note to investors.
He said he sees it as part of a strategy of using AI tools to “automate tasks that once required large teams, allowing the company to streamline operations and reduce costs while maintaining productivity driving an increased need for a leaner operating structure”.
The announcement coincided with a parallel workforce move by Microsoft, while chief executive Satya Nadella was in Sydney. In a memo issued on Friday morning, Microsoft offered voluntary retirement buyouts to US employees, the first such program in the 51-year-old company’s history. About 7 per cent of its US workforce is eligible, with the program open to workers at the senior director level and below whose combined age and years of service total 70 or more.
Based on Microsoft’s last reported US headcount of approximately 125,000, about 8750 employees could qualify. The program does not extend to Australian or other international workers.
Microsoft itself conducted multiple rounds of forced layoffs last year, cutting more than 15,000 employees.
For Australian technology workers, the announcements are the latest AI-related lay-offs in a trend that is tearing through the sector. More than 96,000 technology employees have been made redundant globally so far in 2026 across companies including Oracle, Amazon, Disney and Snap. Amazon in January announced plans to eliminate about 16,000 corporate positions, its second large-scale cut in three months.
Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft alone are projected to spend about $US650 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, with AI infrastructure being reclassified as the core asset.
Meta is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings next week alongside Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.
David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.