Meta, Microsoft purge jobs amid AI build-up

Social media giant Meta on Thursday announced plans to lay off about 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, as it seeks to scale up development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

The owner of social media platforms Facebookand Instagram, along with the messaging app Whatsapp, said in an internal memo that the first round of cuts is due on May 20. Along with the cuts, Meta said 6,000 further posts would be left unfilled.

Also on Thursday, US media reported that tech giant Microsoft was planning to offer voluntary early retirement buyouts for around 8.700 workers, or about 7% of its workforce.

Massive AI investment 

The job cuts come as both companies increase spending on developing AI applications.

Meta has announced plans to develop "personal superintelligence," which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said will tailor AI agents to the needs and wishes of individual users.

"Personal superintelligence that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them will be by far the most useful.  Personal devices like glasses that understand our context because they can see what we see, hear what we hear, and interact with us throughout the day will become our primary computing devices," Zuckerberg wrote in July 2025.

AI knows what you did last summer

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Meta has warned investors that expenses on infrastructure costs and hiring AI experts will grow to as much as $169 billion in 2026.

Microsoft is spending billions of dollars on expanding a global network of data centers that power cloud computing and AI systems like Copilot. Investor concerns about the costs and eventual profitability of data centers have weighed heavily on Microsoft's share price over the past 6 months.

The early retirement buyout program is a first for the legacy tech giant founded in 1975.

Edited by: Karl Sexton