The meta rose 3% in the premarket amid plans for mass layoffs to cover AI costs

Meta The stock rose before US markets opened on Thursday after reports that the company plans to lay off more than 20% of its workforce to balance its staggering AI spending plans this year.

Although the timing and details of the cuts have not been finalized, the tech giant’s top executives told senior leaders to begin plans to reduce headcount, three anonymous sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in an article published on Saturday. Its shares were last down 2.7% in premarket trading at 6:16 a.m. ET, after falling nearly 4% on Sunday.

Meta employs about 79,000 workers by December 2025, and the scale of the layoffs described could affect more than 15,000 workers. It was its biggest layoff since late 2022, when CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was cutting 11,000 jobs and scaling back hiring as part of a broader cost-trimming strategy.

“This is a speculative report about theoretical approaches,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC on Monday.

Further potential meta job cuts come as the tech giant doubles down on building expensive AI infrastructure and reaping the efficiency gains from AI integrated into its workflows.

Several organizations have already revealed major redundancy plans linked to AI in 2026. Jack Dorsey Block It said it was laying off 4,000 employees in February to enable the firm to “move faster with smaller, more talented teams using AI to automate more work.”

Meanwhile, Amazon 16,000 roles were cut in January, in an effort to reduce layers and bureaucracy amid plans to invest more in AI.

So far in 2026, AI has been cited in 12,000 job cuts in the US, according to recent data from consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas.

Meta revealed in its fourth-quarter earnings reports in January that its AI-related capital spending will be between $115 billion and $135 billion this year, more than double the amount spent on efforts to build its new AI unit in 2025.

That’s part of a combined $700 billion including tech hyperscalers Amazon, AlphabetAnd MicrosoftPlanning to invest in AI this year.

These projects have raised concerns among some investors about the sustainable cost when compared with the amount of revenue generated by AI.

Zuckerberg said 2026 will be an important year for AI, as the company’s investment will focus on its mission to “build personal superintelligence.”

Last year, the company invested $14.3 billion to scale AI. Meta eventually poached the group’s CEO Alexander Wang and some of his top engineers and researchers.

“We’ve seen significant layoffs at companies like Block, who have laid off 40% of headcount due to AI. If Meta is willing to reduce headcount to this extent while increasing AI investment, we think this signals a broader shift: AI is driving more productivity,” Jefferies analysts said in a note on Sunday.

“It’s not just for Meta, but as investors across the broader Internet/software landscape reexamine the link between headcount, growth and margins…these cuts are clearly meant to offset rising AI infrastructure costs with a significant AI-driven capex ramp,” he said.