Meta lays off hundreds of workers, including more from Reality Labs

Meta is laying off more employees. Of the hundreds of cuts made on Wednesday, the Reality Labs division is one of the prime recipients. The layoffs come a day after news broke that Meta executives (sans Mark Zuckerberg) could be set for windfalls of up to $2.7 billion each under new pay packages.

Today’s cuts of “hundreds” fall well short of its reported 20 percent workforce reduction plans that leaked earlier this month. At the end of 2025, Meta’s workforce stood at around 79,000 people. However, this could simply be a smaller initial round before the larger cuts come into play.

Earlier in March, Meta reportedly asked some managers to prepare cost-cutting plans. The company is looking to offset its costly AI infrastructure investments, which include a plan to spend $600 billion on data centers by 2028.

The layoffs are also said to affect Meta’s recruiting, sales, Facebook and global operations divisions. But the Reality Labs cuts further illustrate how the company’s VR and metaverse bets failed to pay off. Today’s cuts follow layoffs in January that shed over 1,000 jobs from the division, which has lost over $70 billion since the beginning of 2021. Now, despite the 2021 rebranding that pivoted from social media to the metaverse, Zuckerberg now increasingly views Meta as an AI titan.

In January, the CEO forecast the AI world Big Tech is creating when he said he was beginning to see “projects that used to require big teams now [being] accomplished by a single very talented person.” That sure sounds peachy for the dwindling few reaping the benefits. Those farther down the food chain may have different thoughts.

Speaking of that sweet, sweet C-suite life, Meta is taking a page from Tesla’s Elon Musk pay package. SEC filings reveal that the company is planning a lucrative new incentive system for six executives: CTO Andrew Bosworth, CFO Susan Li, COO Javier Olivan and CPO Chris Cox. They’re set to receive more stock-based compensation tied to performance. Bosworth, Cox, Li and Olivan could reportedly be looking at bounties of up to $2.7 billion apiece.