Meta, Amazon, and Oracle Plan Mass Layoffs as They Pour Billions Into AI Development
March 18, 2026
IBL News | New York
Meta, Amazon, and Oracle are collectively planning tens of thousands of layoffs in 2026 as they leverage AI-driven efficiency gains, betting that remaining employees, boosted by AI tools, will offset productivity losses.
Meta is cutting 20% of its workforce (~15,000 jobs) despite doubling its AI spend to $135 billion, Amazon is planning 14,000 additional cuts via AI efficiency measures, and Oracle is eliminating 10% of its staff while raising $50 billion for AI data center infrastructure.
No date has been set for the cuts, and the magnitude has not been finalized.
If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company’s most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023. It employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31, according to its latest filing.
Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to compete more forcefully in generative AI. The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.
The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion in building data centers by 2028. Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, a social networking platform built for AI agents.
In December 2025, Meta acquired AI agent startup Manus for over $2 billion to accelerate its AI innovation, specifically to enhance autonomous, multi-step task automation.
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