MENLO PARK, CA — In what CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as “a really exciting week for the company,” Meta managed in the span of 48 hours to lay off approximately 700 employees, lose two major child-safety lawsuits totaling $378 million in damages, watch its stock drop 8%, and announce it would be spending $135 billion on AI — a number so large that several analysts reportedly just laughed and hung up.
“We are focused on the future,” Zuckerberg said in a company-wide memo sent minutes before the layoffs were announced. “The future is AI. Some of you will not be part of the future. HR will be in touch.”
The layoffs hit Facebook, global operations, recruiting, sales, and Reality Labs — Meta’s virtual reality division, which has now been partially dismantled so many times that employees have begun showing up each Monday genuinely unsure if they still work there.
The timing proved unfortunate, as just hours after the cuts, a Los Angeles jury awarded $3 million to a plaintiff who said Instagram was “designed to addict young users,” and a New Mexico jury awarded $375 million in a separate case, finding that Meta had “misled users about child safety.” Meta’s stock, already having a rough week, responded by pretending it hadn’t heard any of this.
“These verdicts are disappointing,” said a Meta spokesperson, “and entirely unrelated to the layoffs, which were also disappointing, and also unrelated to the $135 billion we are spending on AI, which we feel very good about.”
The company also faces a new age discrimination lawsuit from a former senior director who claims Meta’s layoffs disproportionately targeted workers over 40. Meta, whose AI systems are trained to be “more efficient,” reportedly could not explain why efficiency kept correlating so strongly with age.
“We remain committed to our community,” Zuckerberg said. “Particularly the parts of the community that are under 40, not suing us, and willing to relocate.”
At press time, Meta had announced its AI would now handle customer complaints, moderate content, and replace four more divisions — none of which appeared to have been told yet.
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