Meta plans sweeping layoffs, Israeli staff brace for impact
Unclear how cuts will affect company’s 800 employees in Israel.
A fresh round of layoffs at Meta is set to begin in May, opening a new period of uncertainty for employees across the company’s global footprint, including its roughly 800 workers in Israel.
According to sources cited by Reuters, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram plans to cut about 10% of its workforce in an initial wave expected on May 20, amounting to nearly 8,000 jobs. Additional rounds of layoffs are anticipated later in the year, although their timing and scope remain undecided.
For employees in Israel, the implications are unclear. Meta employs around 800 people in the country, but it has not indicated how the cuts will be distributed geographically. The absence of detail has left local staff in a state of unease, with many bracing for potential impact while lacking visibility into how decisions will be made.
The planned layoffs mark the company’s most significant workforce reduction since its sweeping restructuring in 2022 and 2023, when it eliminated about 21,000 roles during what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called a “year of efficiency.” At the time, the company was grappling with a sharp downturn in its share price and the unwinding of pandemic-era growth assumptions.
This time, the backdrop is markedly different. Meta is financially stronger, having generated more than $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year. Its shares have risen modestly this year, even as they remain below their peak from last summer. Yet the company is again turning to large-scale layoffs, this time not as a defensive measure, but as part of a broader restructuring tied to artificial intelligence.
Executives are pouring vast resources into AI, aiming to reshape how work is done inside the company. The vision, according to people familiar with the plans, is one of fewer management layers and greater reliance on AI-assisted workflows. In practical terms, that shift could reduce the need for certain roles even as it creates demand for others.
Recent internal changes offer a glimpse of that transition. Meta has reorganized teams within its Reality Labs division and reassigned engineers to a new “Applied AI” group focused on developing autonomous agents capable of writing code and performing complex tasks. Some employees are also being moved into a newly established unit focused on small businesses.
The company’s approach mirrors a wider trend across the technology sector, where executives are increasingly linking job cuts to efficiency gains enabled by AI. Amazon has reduced tens of thousands of corporate roles in recent months, while Block has cut nearly half of its workforce. Industry-wide, more than 73,000 tech employees have already lost their jobs this year, according to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi.
