A hot potato: It seems like Meta wants to follow Nvidia's route of essentially becoming an AI-first company. As part of restructuring plans that will see 10% of its workforce laid off, the social media giant is also reassigning 7,000 people to new, AI-focused jobs within the firm.
Plans for the reassignments were laid out in a memo from chief people officer Janelle Gale, which was seen by Bloomberg. Gale wrote that 7,000 workers will be moved to four new organizations within Meta focused on building new AI tools, including agents and apps.
The new groups include Applied AI Engineering, Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN, Central Analytics, and Enterprise Solutions. Reuters reports that Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator XFN are part of Meta's "AI for Work" push, while Central Analytics will track productivity and the performance of these AI agents. Details of Enterprise Solutions are expected to be shared later.
Gale added that the new organizations will use "AI native design structures" with leaner management layers designed to improve efficiency and productivity. She told employees to work from home on May 20 and to wait for an email from Meta about their possible new roles, with some joining those who have already been transferred.
The reshuffle also involves smaller, faster-moving "pods," another sign that Meta is trying to rebuild parts of the company around AI agents rather than simply add them to existing teams.
Some of the people set to be laid off will be notified of the bad news on Wednesday, too.
Few companies are going all-in on AI quite like Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in April that the company's capital expenditure for the year would be $10 billion more than expected and could reach as much as $145 billion – more than what it spent in 2024 and 2025 combined.
Zuckerberg said most of Meta's spending increase was due to higher component costs and additional data center costs to "support future-year capacity."
As is almost always the case when companies spend more on AI, Meta is letting go of workers to help fund its investments. The firm is laying off around 8,000 employees globally, or about 10% of its total workforce, and it will no longer fill 6,000 open roles. Meta called the cuts part of its "push for efficiency," saying they would allow it to offset other investments – no prizes for guessing what those are.
Adding fuel to the fire was news that Meta is also monitoring and recording employees' mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes. The purpose of this logging is to train Meta's AI agents so they can perform work tasks.
The tool is reportedly called the Model Capability Initiative, and it can also take occasional screen snapshots while running on work-related apps and websites. Meta has told employees the data will not be used for performance reviews, though that has done little to calm concerns inside the company. Essentially, workers are training the AI systems that could eventually replace them.
Reaction from staff was what you'd expect, especially as there is no way to opt out. Wired reports that an internal post protesting the system went viral inside Meta, while more than 1,000 workers have backed a petition opposing the software.