Under the surge in AI investment, labor costs are "sacrificed"! Meta officially begins global layoffs, with Singapore being the first to "take the hit."

According to Zhitong Finance APP, 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 layoff notices to global employees on Wednesday morning, with the first notifications going to employees in its Asian hub in Singapore, who received the relevant emails at 4 AM local time. According to an internal memo, employees in Europe and the United States are also expected to receive notifications in the morning of their respective time zones. Sources indicate that this round of layoffs is expected to particularly impact Meta's engineering and product teams, with further 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 memo, Meta will officially lay off 10% of its global workforce on May 20 (Wednesday), and larger-scale layoffs are expected later this year. Meta's financial report shows that as of the end of March, the total number of Meta employees was approximately 78,000, meaning 10% is about 7,800 people.

In a memo sent to employees on April 23, Meta indicated plans to lay off 10% to enhance efficiency and offset the company's high expenditures in artificial intelligence. The memo also mentioned that the plan would be implemented on May 20.

In addition to direct layoffs, Meta will also undergo disruptive organizational restructuring, implementing a flatter management structure by significantly reducing management positions. Meta's Chief Human Resources Officer, Jenelle Gale, pointed out in the memo that many department leaders have incorporated "AI-native design principles" when designing the new structure, and the company will operate in the future with a leaner, more autonomous small team model to pursue faster response times.

In this structural adjustment, referred to as a "comprehensive transition to AI," in addition to employees facing unemployment, Meta also plans to reassign up to 7,000 employees to new projects related to AI workflows, with some reassignment already underway. Combining layoffs and reassignment, this round of restructuring will directly affect about 20% of Meta's workforce, while the company has also closed another 6,000 job openings.

AI Capital Expenditure Soars, Labor Costs "Make Way"

On April 29, Meta announced its first-quarter financial results, with revenue increasing by 33% year-on-year to $56.31 billion, of which advertising revenue grew by 33% to $55.02 billion; operating profit was $22.87 billion, up 30% year-on-year. The company expects second-quarter revenue to be between $58 billion and $61 billion.

At the same time, Meta raised its full-year capital expenditure forecast for 2026 to between $125 billion and $145 billion, with both the upper and lower limits increased by $10 billion compared to previous estimates. Meta stated in its financial report that the upward adjustment in capital expenditure expectations is mainly due to anticipated increases in component prices this year, as well as increased data center costs to support future capacity.

Despite significant revenue growth driven by AI-enhanced precision targeting, the company still chooses to continue streamlining its workforce to "offset other investments." Gale characterized the layoffs in the memo as an action to "enhance company efficiency," explicitly stating that it is to "offset the other investments we are making." It is worth mentioning that this is not the first time Meta has conducted large-scale layoffs. Since laying off approximately 11,000 employees in November 2022, Meta has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs, with this latest action involving about 8,000 people being the largest adjustment since 2023's "Year of Efficiency."

Meta is not alone in this trend. Microsoft launched its first voluntary employee departure program in 51 years during the same period, targeting U.S. employees whose age and tenure combined exceed 70 years, with about 7% of U.S. employees qualifying, potentially affecting around 9,000 people. Previously, Microsoft had laid off over 15,000 employees by 2025. Meanwhile, its subsidiary LinkedIn announced another round of layoffs, cutting about 5%, or nearly 900 employees, impacting engineering, product, and marketing teams, even though the company recorded a 12% year-on-year revenue increase in the latest quarter.

Amazon's AI transformation is even more aggressive. Since the beginning of 2025, Amazon has laid off over 30,000 corporate employees, primarily in non-core business departments, while frontline positions in e-commerce delivery and AWS cloud services have remained unaffected. At the same time, Amazon has required employees to adhere to an "AI-first" principle in almost all workflows, including coding, product design, and supply chain analysis, and plans to invest about $200 billion in building AI infrastructure by 2026. However, this push has sparked internal reactions—according to internal employees, the immature AI tools have instead increased the workload of manually fixing errors.

According to Layoffs.fyi, the number of layoffs in the global tech industry has exceeded 103,000 since 2026, nearing the total of about 124,000 for the entire year of 2025. In the tech layoff wave of the first quarter of 2026, influenced by the impact of productivity tools and pressure from Wall Street, companies accelerating the shift from human labor to AI automation has become an irreversible structural trend