Meta is laying off several hundred employees across Facebook, its sales and recruiting teams, and Reality Labs, its virtual reality division, according to CNBC, citing people familiar with the matter.
The cuts affect both US and international workers. Meta says it will attempt to relocate some affected staff to other roles within the company, though it has not confirmed how many positions are being eliminated or how many employees might be reassigned.
"Meta's teams are restructured or undergo changes periodically to ensure they are best positioned to achieve their goals," a company spokesperson told CNBC. "Whenever possible, we seek other opportunities for employees whose roles may be affected."
The pattern behind the cuts
This is the second significant round of layoffs in 2026. In January, Meta cut more than 1,000 employees, with Reality Labs bearing a substantial share of those losses as the company shifted its hardware focus from metaverse projects to AI wearables.
Meta employed around 79,000 people at the start of the year. The current round keeps the total below 1,000, making it a targeted restructuring rather than a broad reduction. The direction of travel, however, is clear. Teams associated with the metaverse era are shrinking. Teams and budgets associated with AI are not.
Where the money is going instead
Meta has projected record capital expenditure this year of up to $135 billion, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pledged $600 billion for US infrastructure investment by 2028. Those are not hedged commitments. They represent a deliberate reallocation of capital from one strategic bet to another.
The metaverse was Zuckerberg's last big conviction trade. It cost the company hundreds of billions in investment and years of investor patience. AI is the next one, and the layoffs in Reality Labs are as much a statement about what Meta is walking away from as they are about cost reduction.
The question for the employees caught in this round is whether the roles Meta is creating on the AI side are as numerous as the ones it is cutting on the metaverse side. So far, the evidence suggests they are not.