Meta's AI agent plan would have cut 25% of staff

Project OT was more than a cost-cutting exercise. It was a blueprint for making Meta "AI native" — a company where AI agents interact, workflows are automated, and new builds are AI-first. The plan also involved selling AI agents to third parties, a move Meta began in June. This suggests that Meta's leadership saw AI as both an internal efficiency tool and a commercial product, with the potential to reshape the company's operations and revenue streams.

The pilot program that restructured engineering, research, and at least eight other teams into smaller groups, along with the "AI-Native Playbook" post, shows that some of the ideas behind Project OT were already being tested. However, the reported cancellation of the November layoffs after the May wave, with no clear reason given, indicates that full adoption of AI-driven workforce reduction was not straightforward. It is possible that Zuckerberg had concerns about the plan's execution or its impact on morale, but Reuters could not determine what prompted the shift.