Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, began laying off approximately 8,000 employees across the world on May 20, 2026, and did so while asking those very workers to stay home. According to Bloomberg, the termination notices arrived in inboxes at around 4 AM local time, starting with employees in Singapore. Workers in the US and UK followed in their respective time zones. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the reason is a major shift toward artificial intelligence. He says the company now needs smaller teams that can work faster and make quick decisions.
According to reports, which reviewed internal communications, Meta deliberately asked employees to work from home on May 20 while the global layoff process was carried out. The company wanted to avoid the optics of staff clearing their desks in open offices.
Employees in Singapore received the emails first at around 4 AM local time. Workers in the United States and Britain were notified at similar pre-dawn hours in their respective time zones. For most, the news arrived before they had even started their morning coffee.
Meta layoffs 2026: Who got cut and why
The Meta layoffs primarily hit engineering and product teams. The company confirmed the restructuring is designed to create a flatter organisation — one with smaller teams that can move faster and hold more direct ownership of their work.
According to Bloomberg, in a separate move, Meta internally announced that around 7,000 employees were being shifted into newly created AI-focused teams. These groups will work on AI products, tools, and automated agents — areas Zuckerberg has publicly called his top priority.
Zuckerberg’s AI-related investments
Reportedly, Meta is planning to spend more than $100 billion on AI-related investments in 2026 alone. The strategy, as Zuckerberg has framed it publicly, is to build technology that lets smaller teams accomplish what once required hundreds of people.
In a January 2026 Facebook post cited by NBC News, Zuckerberg said: “We’re starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person.” The layoffs appear to be the direct consequence of that philosophy.
This is not Meta’s first large-scale reduction. The company had already laid off roughly 1,000 employees in January 2026 – about 10% of that unit. Before that, Meta cut 11,000 jobs in November 2022 and another 10,000 in 2023. More cuts are expected later in 2026.
