With the surge in investment in AI, labor costs are "sacrificed"! Meta (META.US) officially launches a global large-scale layoff, with Singapore being the first to be affected.

Meta Platforms (META.US) is notifying thousands of employees of layoffs, as part of the company's restructuring to improve efficiency, cut costs, and increase investment in artificial intelligence (AI). The company began sending out layoff notices to global employees on Wednesday morning, with employees at Hub Group, Inc. Class A in Singapore being the first to receive the notifications at 4 am local time. According to an internal memo, European and American employees are also expected to receive notifications in the early morning hours in their respective time zones. Insiders say that this round of layoffs is expected to particularly impact Meta's engineering and product teams, with more layoffs possible later this year. On Monday, Meta issued a memo to internal employees formally disclosing the significant layoffs and organizational restructuring plan set to be implemented this week. According to the plan outlined in the memo, Meta will officially lay off 10% of its global workforce on May 20th (Wednesday) and is expected to carry out a larger-scale deep layoff later this year. Meta's financial reports show that as of the end of March, the total number of Meta employees is around 78,000, with 10% being approximately 7,800 employees. As early as the memo sent to employees on April 23, Meta had announced plans to lay off 10% of its workforce to improve efficiency and offset the company's high spending on artificial intelligence. The plan was also mentioned to be implemented on May 20th in the memo. In addition to direct layoffs, Meta's internal organization will undergo disruptive structural adjustments, with a significant reduction in management positions to implement a flatter management structure. Meta's Chief HR Officer Janell Gale noted in the memo that many department leaders have introduced "AI-native design principles" in designing the new architecture, and the company will operate in the future relying on smaller, more agile teams for faster response times. In this structural adjustment known as "full-scale AI transformation," in addition to employees facing layoff, Meta also plans to transfer as many as 7,000 employees to new projects related to AI workflows, with some job transfers already underway. Combining layoffs and transfers, this restructuring will directly affect around 20% of Meta's workforce, and the company has also closed an additional 6,000 job positions. AI capital expenditure significantly increased, making way for labor costs On April 29th, Meta released its first-quarter financial report, with revenue increasing by 33% year-on-year to $56.31 billion, including a 33% year-on-year growth in advertising revenue to $55.02 billion; an operating profit of $22.87 billion, a 30% year-on-year increase. The company expects second-quarter revenue to be between $58 billion and $61 billion. At the same time, Meta has raised its full-year 2026 capital expenditure outlook to between $125 billion and $145 billion, both upper and lower limits increasing by $10 billion compared to before. Meta stated in the financial report that the upward revision of capital expenditure expectations is mainly due to expected price increases for components this year, as well as increased data center costs to support future capacity. Despite significant revenue growth driven by AI-driven precise targeting, the company still chooses to streamline its workforce to "offset other investments." Gale characterized the layoffs in the memo as an action to "enhance company efficiency," stating clearly that this is to "offset the other investments we are making." It is worth noting that this is not the first time Meta has conducted large-scale workforce reductions. Since laying off around 11,000 employees in November 2022, Meta has carried out multiple rounds of layoffs, with this action affecting around 8,000 employees being the largest adjustment since the "Year of Efficiency" in 2023. Meta is not alone in this trend. During the same period, Microsoft Corporation launched its first-ever voluntary separation program for employees in its 51-year history, targeting U.S. employees whose combined age and tenure reach 70 years or more, with around 7% of U.S. employees meeting the criteria, potentially affecting around 9,000 employees. Previously, Microsoft Corporation had already laid off over 15,000 employees in 2025. In the meantime, its subsidiary LinkedIn announced another round of layoffs affecting around 5% or nearly 900 employees, impacting engineering, product, and marketing teams, even though the company recorded a 12% year-on-year revenue growth in the latest quarter. Amazon.com, Inc. has been more aggressive in its AI transformation pace. Since early 2025, Amazon.com, Inc. has laid off over 30,000 corporate employees, with layoffs mainly focused on non-core business departments, while frontline positions in e-commerce delivery and AWS cloud services remain unaffected. Alongside layoffs, Amazon.com, Inc. requires employees to follow an "AI-first" principle in almost all workflows such as coding, product design, and supply chain analysis, intending to invest around $200 billion in AI infrastructure in 2026. However, this accelerated pace has sparked internal backlash - according to internal employees, the immature AI tools have increased the workload of fixing errors manually. According to Layoffs.fyi statistics, global tech layoffs in 2026 have already exceeded 103,000 people, approaching the level of around 124,000 people for the whole of 2025. In the first quarter of 2026, in response to productivity tool impacts and pressure from Wall Street, companies accelerating the transition from labor-intensive operations to AI automation has become an irreversible structural trend.