Meta Is Axing up to 16,000 Jobs to Fund Its AI Ambitions — and It's Just the Beginning

The AI arms race is getting expensive, and someone has to pay for it. This week, Meta became the latest tech giant to signal that the bill is coming due — in the form of its workforce. Reuters broke the story on Friday: Meta is preparing sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of its roughly 79,000 employees. That's up to 16,000 people out the door — more than the 11,000 cut in 2022 and the 10,000 axed in 2023 combined. Meta hasn't confirmed the numbers, but internal sources say managers have already been asked to draw up cost-cutting plans, with some expecting an announcement within the month. The reason? AI. A lot of it. The $135 Billion Bet Meta has been spending at a scale that would make most companies blink. The company projected up to $135 billion in AI infrastructure spending for 2026 alone. That's not a typo. It covers AI hardware, cloud compute, and an aggressive talent acquisition spree aimed squarely at OpenAI and Google. To put that in context, Meta's entire 2024 re