Meta Cuts Jobs, Zuckerberg Trains AI to Run the Company: Is the Metaverse Dead?

Intermittent layoffs are the norm at Meta, but they are now being carried out as the Mark Zuckerberg-led company’s focus shifts towards building AI. This is done with the goal of accelerating its own workforce. This transition has become more overt than ever. On Wednesday, the company fired around 700 employees, according to reports from The New York Times and The Information. That number is only a sliver of its global workforce of around 78,000, but largely affected employees in its Reality Labs unit tasked with building a virtual reality “Metaverse,” which turned out to be a dismal failure. This failure failed to attract users, let alone supplant our physical reality as Zuckerberg envisioned, losing roughly $80 billion. In January, Meta fired 10 percent of the Reality Labs unit, or about 1,500 employees, and this month wavered on shutting the whole thing down.

In these latest cuts, some of the other firings were in sales, recruiting, and Facebook, signaling that Zuckerberg is separating the chaff in non-AI related units beyond its flailing Metaverse division.

Meta characterized the latest firings as routine belt-tightening. “Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals,” a Meta spokesman said in a statement, per the NYT. “Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted.” Perhaps the most poetic symbol of Meta’s AI pivot is that Zuckerberg himself is reportedly training a “CEO AI agent” to help him do his job, performing duties like quickly retrieving information so Zuckerberg doesn’t have to go down the chain of command. The Wall Street Journal scoop also detailed how AI evangelism from the top was trickling into every corner of the workforce, with performance reviews now evaluating how employees use AI tools. Many workers are experimenting with their own AI agents, which they deploy to communicate with colleagues, or even their colleagues’ AI agents.

As the rank and file busy themselves with AI helpers, the c-suite is lining its own pockets.

Less than a day before the layoffs were announced, Meta unveiled a new stock program for top executives that could rake in nearly a billion dollars each over the next five years. Per the NYT reporting, it allows the executives to buy more Meta stock if the company hits specified growth targets, the most ambitious being Meta reaching a market capitalization of $9 trillion by 2031; its current valuation is $1.5 trillion. Should that come to pass, some of the execs would own stock worth as much as $921 million, according to an analysis by Equilar cited by the NYT. It’s the first time since the company went public in 2012 that Meta has given its execs stock options. And what’s telling is the company’s justification: keeping Meta competitive with AI rivals. “This is a big bet,” the Meta spokesman said in a statement. “These pay packages will not be realized unless Meta achieves massive future success, benefiting all of our shareholders.”

There could be more layoffs to come. Insiders told Reuters earlier this month that the company is preparing to fire as much as 20 percent of its workforce, or around 15,000 employees. (Meta dismissed the claims as “speculative reporting.”) Adding to the unrest, Meta is also facing strong legal headwinds. On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury found that it deliberately violated state law by misleading users about the safety of its products, with a judge slapping a $375 million penalty on the company. And in Los Angeles, a court found that Meta, along with Google-owned YouTube, was responsible for harming a young user with addictive design features that caused mental health issues.