The news: Meta will cut about 10% of its global workforce in May, with additional cuts planned for later this year, per Reuters. The mass layoffs—representing nearly 8,000 employees—are being linked to Meta’s broader AI efforts.

Sources speaking with Reuters noted that plans for future layoffs could be adjusted depending on developments in Meta’s AI capabilities.

Zooming out: Meta is following a broader pattern in the tech sector where major companies are increasingly turning to AI to cut costs and boost productivity—often at the cost of their employees.

• Amazon cut up to 30,000 corporate employees in late 2025, representing about 10% of its total workforce, as part of a broader push to use genAI to increase output with fewer resources.
• Microsoft cut 3% of its workforce last year, up to 7,000 employees, driven by a strategic pivot to fund massive AI investments.

The layoffs also come three years after Meta’s “year of efficiency,” which saw it lay off more than 20,000 employees.

Why it matters: A core part of Meta’s AI strategy has been to automate its ad tools—making its marketing workforce especially vulnerable to reductions across the funnel.

• Meta’s Advantage+ suite allows advertisers to use its systems as either a fully automated, end-to-end solution, or as modular components. Fully automated campaigns can drive for outcomes like app downloads, lead generation, and sales.
• As of Q3 2025, Advantage+ is turned on by default for advertisers buying leads, app downloads, or driving sales—highlighting that automation is now the standard expectation.
• Meta’s Andromeda tool is an AI-powered ads retrieval engine that offers impression-level personalization and sequentially appropriate ads—meaning ads are tailored to individual users based on their interactions.
• The company has also introduced AI features for creative asset generation, such as text generation for catalog ads, Image Animation, and Video Expansion.
• Meta introduced options to consolidate ad targeting using AI in 2025, shifting advertising away from its manual roots.

Meta has noted that its automated campaign tools have driven significant revenue growth, with end-to-end AI campaigns reaching a $60 billion annual run rate in Q3 2025; we forecast its US social network ad revenues will surpass $100 billion in 2026.

Implications for marketers: Meta’s layoffs underscore how quickly AI is reshaping ad execution on its platform. As automation takes over more campaign decisions, brands and advertisers will need to focus less on manual inputs like audience targeting and more on clearly defining desired business outcomes and feeding strong signals into Meta’s systems.