Meta Stock Laying Off 8,000 Workers — Is the Stock Still a Buy?

TLDR

• Meta plans to lay off around 10% of its global workforce (~8,000 employees) starting May 20, 2026.
• Further cuts are planned for later in 2026, though details on timing and scale are not yet finalized.
• The layoffs are tied to an AI-driven efficiency push, not financial distress — Meta posted $200B+ revenue and $60B profit in 2025.
• CEO Mark Zuckerberg is investing heavily in AI infrastructure, restructuring teams into a new “Applied AI” organization.
• Analyst Ivan Feinseth rates META a Strong Buy with a $945 price target, implying ~37% upside; Wall Street consensus also sits at Strong Buy.

Meta plans to begin its largest round of job cuts since 2022, with the first wave of layoffs set for May 20, 2026. The company intends to cut roughly 10% of its global workforce in that initial round — around 8,000 of its nearly 79,000 employees.

Sources familiar with the plans told Reuters that further cuts are coming in the second half of the year. The exact timing and size of those reductions have not been finalized, and executives may adjust their approach depending on how AI capabilities develop.

Meta Platforms, Inc., META

This is not a company in trouble. Meta posted over $200 billion in revenue and a $60 billion profit in 2025, even with outsized spending on AI. The cuts are about running leaner, not staying afloat.

The last time Meta moved this aggressively on headcount was during its 2022–2023 “year of efficiency,” when it cut around 21,000 jobs following a pandemic-era overexpansion and a pullback in digital ad revenue. The picture today looks quite different.

AI Is Driving the Restructuring

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pumping hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, and the workforce changes are a direct extension of that strategy. The company recently reorganized teams in its Reality Labs division and created a new “Applied AI” unit, pulling engineers from across the business to focus on building AI agents capable of writing code and handling complex tasks autonomously.

Some staff are also being moved into Meta Small Business, a new unit launched last month. The restructuring appears designed to reduce management layers and build out a workforce that relies more on AI-assisted tools.

The broader tech sector is moving in the same direction. Amazon has trimmed around 30,000 corporate employees recently, representing close to 10% of its white-collar staff. Block cut nearly half its workforce in February. Both companies cited AI-driven efficiency gains as the reason.

According to Layoffs.fyi, 73,212 tech employees have lost jobs so far in 2026. For all of 2024, that number was 153,000.

What Analysts Are Saying

The AI spending wave has raised some eyebrows among investors, who are watching capital expenditure levels rise across the sector and wondering when returns will materialize. Meta has been one of the more aggressive spenders, and the question of whether the economics will work out is an open one.

Ivan Feinseth of Tigress Financial is not particularly worried. He points to Meta’s strong balance sheet and consistent cash generation as factors that give the company room to invest heavily without putting itself at risk. He’s assigned META a Strong Buy rating with a $945 price target — roughly 37% above current levels.

Wall Street broadly agrees. Meta carries a Strong Buy consensus from 39 analysts, with 6 Holds and no Sells in the mix. The average price target sits at $855.46, suggesting around 24% upside over the next 12 months.

Meta’s stock is up 3.68% year-to-date but remains below the record high it hit last summer.

The first wave of layoffs is scheduled for May 20, 2026.

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