Meta is reportedly planning to lay off 20%, and Zuckerberg once discussed AI efficiency: one person can match a whole team!

Meta is shifting the cost pressures of the AI arms race onto its workforce. According to a report by Reuters on Saturday, Meta is planning large-scale layoffs, with the layoff rate potentially reaching 20% or even higher, aimed at offsetting massive investments in AI infrastructure and preparing for the efficiency gains brought by AI-assisted work. Three insiders revealed that Meta's senior management has recently signaled to other senior leaders to start planning for reduction proposals. If the 20% layoff rate is confirmed, based on Meta's approximately 79,000 employees as of the end of last December, the number of layoffs would exceed 15,000, making it the largest layoff action since the company's major restructuring during the "Year of Efficiency" from 2022 to 2023. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone responded that "this is speculative reporting about theoretical plans" and has not formally confirmed any related plans. The Dual Logic of AI Betting and Efficiency Restructuring Behind this layoff plan is Meta's aggressive bet in the AI field. The company announced plans to invest $600 billion in data center construction by 2028, while also spending at least $2 billion to acquire the AI startup Manus, and completed the acquisition of the AI agent social platform Moltbook this week. To build a super-intelligent team, Meta has also offered compensation packages worth up to hundreds of millions of dollars to top AI researchers. However, the backdrop for this series of investments is not optimistic. Meta's Llama 4 model series faced multiple setbacks last year, including early versions being criticized for misleading results in benchmark tests, and the largest version, Behemoth, originally scheduled for summer release, was ultimately abandoned. Currently, Meta's super-intelligent team is working on a new model codenamed "Avocado," but reports indicate that this model's performance has also fallen short of expectations. At the same time, efficiency improvements have accelerated layoffs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in January that he has begun to see "projects that used to require large teams can now be completed by a very talented individual." This statement aligns with the overall trend in the tech industry, as Amazon confirmed layoffs of about 16,000 employees in January, accounting for about 10% of its total workforce; fintech company Block laid off nearly half of its employees last month, with CEO Jack Dorsey explicitly attributing this to the increasing capabilities of AI tools