Then came another line. "If you are already in the office, we ask that you please gather any personal items at your desk and head home".
The email, obtained by Business Insider, landed in inboxes at 04:00 AM on Wednesday as Meta began cutting nearly 8,000 jobs – roughly 10 percent of their workforce – while simultaneously shifting more than 7,000 employees into AI-focused teams.
The message was formal. Calm. Carefully worded. But beneath the corporate language sat the reality of another sweeping restructuring inside one of the world's biggest tech companies.
Meta called the layoffs part of their "continued effort to run the company more efficiently" and said the cuts would help "offset the other investments" they are making – a reference to the company's massive AI push.
Employees were informed that their badges had been deactivated. Access to internal systems would be removed. Within an hour, they would instead be redirected to Meta's "Alumni Portal" for details on severance, visas, benefits, and job assistance.
The layoffs mark Meta's biggest company-wide cuts since Mark Zuckerberg launched his 2022-23 "Year of Efficiency", a period that erased around 21,000 jobs across the company. This time, the cuts come as Meta sharply increase spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company's forecast of capital expenditure said to be between $125 billion and $145 billion this year – more than double their 2025 spending.
Another detail from the email stood out. Meta had earlier instructed employees to work from home on the day layoffs began. But for those who still showed up to office campuses, the email carried a quiet finality: collect your belongings and leave.
Significantly, the company had around 78,000 employees as of March. Between layoffs and internal reshuffling toward AI initiatives, nearly one in five Meta workers is now being affected by the restructuring in some form.
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