Let that sink in for a moment. Today right now, as you read this 8,000 people received an email from Meta telling them they no longer have a job. Not because the company is struggling. Not because they performed badly. Not because the business is losing money.
Meta made a record $56.31 billion in revenue last quarter. It is one of the most profitable companies on the planet. And it is still cutting 10% of its entire workforce today, because it believes artificial intelligence can do their jobs better, faster, and for a fraction of the cost.
This is not a story about one company. This is a signal about where the entire business world is heading and it is happening faster than most people realise.
What actually happened at Meta today?
At 9am Pacific Time today, Meta's Chief People Officer Janelle Gale sent an internal memo to the company's 79,000 employees. The message was clear: 8,000 of them would receive a notification by end of day. Additionally, 6,000 open job roles positions Meta had planned to hire for have been cancelled entirely. That brings the total effective headcount reduction to 14,000 positions.
The memo described the cuts as structural rather than performance-based. These are not people who failed. They are people whose roles no longer fit the AI-first company Meta is rapidly becoming.
Simultaneously, Meta is moving 7,000 workers into four new AI-focused organisations and creating entirely new job categories: ‘AI builder’, ‘AI pod lead’, and ‘AI org lead’. The company’s internal language describes the goal as ‘fundamentally rewiring how we operate.’