Meta lays off roughly 10 percent of workforce as company pivots to AI amid record profits; Elon Musk loses lawsuit against OpenAI; Google announces agentic search changes at I/O 2026

Meta is letting go of roughly 10 percent of its workforce, which is about 8,000 employees total. Mark Zuckerberg cited the company's spending on AI and data centers as a reason for the cuts. This adds to roughly 25,000 jobs cut in the past few years as part of efforts that started in 2023.

Meta installed software on employee laptops that monitors keystrokes and cursor movement to gather training data for internal AI models. Employees cannot opt out of the monitoring, and roughly 7,000 remaining employees are being drafted into AI teams regardless of their prior roles.

Meta is experiencing record or near-record profits and revenue growth, though employees reported the company's financial success is not driven by artificial intelligence. Morale has deteriorated significantly due to the combination of layoff uncertainty and mandatory AI workplace changes.