CNBC reported that the cuts start May 20 and follow earlier rounds that removed about 10 percent of metaverse-focused staff, including roughly 1,000 Reality Labs employees, plus hundreds more roles across Facebook, Reality Labs, global operations and sales.
According to the Times, Meta is spending billions on AI infrastructure, including a fleet of costly data centres, and is poaching elite talent to catch up with Google and OpenAI.
In January, Meta said its capital expenditure could nearly double to US$135bn this year, which the article noted has fuelled investor anxiety.
Meta has centred its AI strategy on what CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “personal superintelligence,” rolling out a new AI model called Muse Spark that it says is “purpose-built” for its products, including the Meta AI chatbot, though it acknowledges the model lags the most advanced rivals.
The company has also announced an AI data centre project dubbed “Meta Compute,” aiming for “tens of gigawatts this decade and hundreds of gigawatts or more,” with each gigawatt costing tens of billions of dollars to build.