In short
- Meta is slicing about 1,000 Actuality Labs roles because it shifts funding towards AI and wearables.
- The cuts comply with years of heavy losses within the metaverse unit and a previous 11,000-job layoff in 2022.
- The transfer is modest in contrast with broader tech layoffs in 2025, which eased late within the yr.
Meta Platforms, the mother or father firm of Fb and Instagram, has minimize about 1,000 jobs from its digital actuality and metaverse division Actuality Labs, because it reportedly prepares to shift assets towards AI wearables and cellular options.
The Menlo Park-based firm introduced the layoffs Tuesday morning in an inner memo from Chief Know-how Officer Andrew Bosworth first seen by Bloomberg. Earlier reporting from the paper cites estimates that Actuality Labs employs about 15,000 employees, making the cuts roughly 10% of the division's workforce.
“We stated final month that we had been shifting a few of our funding from Metaverse towards Wearables,” Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton wrote in an announcement to state press outlet SFGate.
The transfer was a “a part of that effort,” and Meta plans to “reinvest the financial savings to assist the expansion of wearables this yr,” Clayton added.
Meta’s cuts arrive as the primary main tech layoff of 2026, after massive workforce reductions tapered off late final yr.
In November 2022, Meta minimize about 11,000 workers in one of many largest layoffs in its historical past, whereas CEO Mark Zuckerberg concurrently reaffirmed the corporate’s long-term dedication to the metaverse.
The transfer uncovered early rigidity between Actuality Labs’ mounting losses and investor stress for effectivity, whilst Meta insisted the technique remained intact.
By the tip of the identical yr, Meta’s metaverse push appeared to battle resulting from weak consumer adoption, unclear client demand, and the rising monetary drag of Actuality Labs.
As capital tightened and rates of interest rose, the size of the wager grew to become tougher to justify, setting the stage for the corporate’s present shift away from its beforehand heavy metaverse funding.
Tech layoffs mount
Nonetheless, the roughly 1,000 roles being eradicated in Actuality Labs signify a small fraction of the roughly 154,000 expertise job losses recorded throughout 2025, based on knowledge from Challenger, Grey & Christmas.
“Know-how has been pivoting to each creating and implementing synthetic intelligence way more rapidly than every other trade. This, coupled with over-hiring during the last decade, created a wave of job loss within the trade,” the analysis agency wrote.
The tech sector led all personal industries in layoffs final yr, with job cuts rising 15% from 2024.
Business knowledge compiled by Layoffs.fyi present that tech layoffs fell sharply into late 2025, dropping from 18,510 in October to eight,932 in November and to round 300 in December, as massive, headline-scale workforce reductions tapered off heading into year-end.
Amongst its FAANG friends, Meta’s transfer seems modest in scale.
Amazon accounted for the most important workforce reductions throughout the group over the previous yr, slicing tens of hundreds of roles throughout retail, gadgets, and AWS via a number of rounds, per layoff knowledge sourced from public stories.
Google and Microsoft carried out smaller however recurring layoffs, usually within the low hundreds per spherical, tied to price controls and AI-driven restructuring, whereas persevering with to rent selectively in precedence areas.
Apple largely averted mass layoffs, relying as a substitute on attrition and slower hiring, whereas Netflix made restricted cuts, usually numbering within the lots of, because it adjusted operations following modifications to its password-sharing mannequin.
Data on the California Employment Improvement Division don’t but present {that a} employee adjustment and retraining discover (WARN) attributed to Meta has been filed as of Wednesday morning, per Decrypt's overview.
Decrypt has reached out to Meta Platforms and the California Employment Improvement Division for remark and can replace this story ought to they reply.
