TLDR:
- Meta plans to cut more than 20% of its 79,000-strong workforce, potentially eliminating around 16,000 jobs.
- Meta’s avocado model has missed its deadline three times and now leads Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic on benchmarks.
- Meta is reportedly exploring a temporary deal to license Google’s Gemini to power its AI products.
- Meta has earmarked $135 billion in data center spending by 2026 and $600 billion by 2028.
Meta’s layoffs are under scrutiny after Reuters confirmed plans to cut more than 20 percent of the company’s roughly 79,000 employees.
About 16,000 jobs could be at risk under the reported plan. The move comes as Meta expects AI spending to increase from $115 billion to $135 billion in 2026.
However, the company’s own AI model has faced many delays. Meta is also said to be considering licensing rival technology in the meantime.
The model’s delay casts doubt on the AI replacement thesis
Meta’s next-generation AI model, internally called Avocado, has been delayed from March to at least May 2026. Internal benchmarks showed that the model lagged Google’s Gemini 3.0, OpenAI and Anthropic in key areas.
These areas include reasoning, coding, and writing performance. The delay comes at a particularly sensitive time for the company.
A delay is not a one-time event. The model is three times off from the original 2025 release target. Any delay hampers Meta’s ability to prove that AI can handle what big teams used to do.
Social media analyst @shanaka86 captured the tension in a widely shared post. He wrote:Mark Zuckerberg is going to lay off 16,000 people because he believes AI can replace them. Its own AI can’t take Google’s place.”
JUST IN: Mark Zuckerberg is going to lay off 16,000 people because he believes AI can replace them.
Its own AI cannot replace Google.
This contradiction is the entire history of the technological economy of 2026, and no one is connecting the pieces.
Reuters confirmed on Thursday that Meta… pic.twitter.com/smeeXBI68k
— Shanaka Anslem Perera 
(@shanaka86) March 14, 2026
He called this conflict “the entire history of the technological economy of 2026.” Many investors and observers have since stepped up their online watch.
Meta’s previous model, Llama 4 Behemoth, was never publicly released. The company is now said to be considering a plan to temporarily license Google’s Gemini. This means that the competitor’s model works within the Meta AI product under Meta’s own brand.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts earlier this year that he “to see projects that used to require large teams are now handled by one very talented individual.
However, the company’s AI technology has not demonstrated this capability in competitive benchmarks. The cuts seem to be getting ahead of the technology they’re supposed to depend on.
Acquisitions and capital commitments add financial weight to the strategy
Meta’s capital expenditures for 2026 are projected to be between $115 billion and $135 billion. That’s nearly double the company’s roughly $72 billion in infrastructure spending last year.
Additionally, Meta has committed to $600 billion in total data center spending by 2028. The scale of this commitment further tracks AI model delays.
The company also went on an aggressive buying spree in a short period of time. Meta paid $14.3 billion to acquire Alexander Wang from Scale AI.
It then spent more than $2 billion on Manus and an undisclosed amount on Moltbook. Both deals took place in recent months, adding to the company’s growing cost base.
The integration of these acquisitions, however, depends on a model that is still incomplete. Manus processes 147 trillion tokens using third-party AI models, not Meta’s own. Moltbook’s agent systems run on a platform called OpenClaw, also outside of the Meta stack.
Meta hired Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO, as part of its talent pool. The company also attracted top AI researchers with compensation packages that exceed $100 million each. Zuckerberg described the goal as building “the highest talent density laboratory in the industry.”
Meta spokesman Andy Stone denied reports of layoffs. He called them “tentative accounts of theoretical approaches” with no approved plans or schedules.
At press time, Meta shares were still down 3.83 percent. The proposed cuts would be the company’s biggest since the 2022-23 efficiency programme, which eliminated 21,000 positions.
Meta’s $135 billion AI launch stumbles: Lives appeared first on Blockonomi as a leading competitor to the Trails model.
