Meta, the owner of Facebook and maker of Meta Quest VR headsets, will cut a further 10,000 jobs this year and close around 5000 additional open roles, as part of a “year of efficiency”.
These cuts come on top of the previous 10,000 job losses announced back in November last year, which equated to a loss of 13 percent of all Meta employees globally.
Announcing the changes publicly via his Facebook page, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg blamed higher US interest rates, global geopolitical instability and increased regulation, on top of last year’s slowdown in revenue which he dubbed as a “humbling wake-up call”.
That said, Zuckerburg noted how Meta was still set on its work developing AI and its experiments creating a metaverse, on top of its work running its popular suite of social apps.
“I believe that we are working on some of the most transformative technology our industry has ever seen,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Our single largest investment is in advancing AI and building it into every one of our products. We have the infrastructure to do this at unprecedented scale and I think the experiences it enables will be amazing.