Meta Restructures, Moves Thousands to AI Roles Amid Layoffs

Meta is not only laying off thousands of workers on Wednesday due to artificial intelligence, it's also moving thousands to new roles within the company. According to Reuters and The New York Times, Meta HR head Janelle Gale has notified employees that 7,000 of them will be moved to four new organizations focused on building new AI tools and apps. Gale reportedly wrote in the internal memo seen by the publications that the restructuring "will make [the company] more productive and make ⁠the ​work more rewarding."

The new organizations will use "AI native design structures" and will not have as many layers of management per employee, Gale reportedly wrote. She told employees to work from home on Wednesday, May 20, and to wait for Meta's email about their possible new roles, though some of the workers had already been transferred. The company will also be sending out notifications to some of the people that will be laid off that day.

If you'll recall, Meta told employees in late April that it's cutting 8,000 jobs and will also be closing 6,000 open jobs. Gale reportedly told them in a memo at the time that it was "part of [Meta's] continued effort to run the company more efficiently" and will allow it to offset its other investments. While she didn't elaborate, Gale was most likely talking about Meta's bets on artificial intelligence. Companies across the tech industry have been actively laying off workers for a while now to put more of their money into their AI endeavors.

Meta is betting big on AI after winding down its plans for the metaverse, which didn't quite take the world by storm as it had hoped. It's planning to build data centers with "tens of gigawatts" within this decade. It created a "superintelligence" team of AI experts, with company chief Mark Zuckerberg even hand-picking potential recruits and inviting them to his home. It's building AI agents and putting its AI chatbot in several of its products. The Times says Zuckerberg told investors the company is planning to spend between $115 billion to $135 billion this year, mostly on AI development.

By the end of 2025, Meta had around 78,000 employees. The layoffs affecting 8,000 workers will, thus, eliminate nearly 10 percent of the current roles within the company. Reuters says Meta will even cut more jobs later this year. Workers affected by the layoffs will get 16 weeks of severance pay, with an additional two extra weeks for every year they'd been with the company.