Meta is reportedly laying off hundreds of employees across Reality Labs and other teams

Meta began laying off hundreds of employees this week, according to reporting from The Information and Reuters. The layoffs impact people in Meta’s Reality Labs team, social media and recruiting, according to two people familiar with the matter cited by The Information.

The news comes following reporting earlier this month from Reuters that Meta was planning “sweeping” layoffs affecting up to 20% of staff. However, if reporting is accurate, this week’s layoffs would impact a small portion of the nearly 79,000 total employees Meta disclosed in its annual filing at the end of 2025.

This month, Meta signaled a shift away from its metaverse initiatives, which gave the company its current name in 2021. Earlier in March, Meta announced that it would shut down Horizon Worlds for its Quest VR headset this summer, pivoting to focus on the mobile version. While it later reversed that decision following feedback from players, Meta will only continue to allow players to jump into current experiences, ceasing the launch of new game experiences in VR. The company’s Reality Labs team, which is said to be a part of today’s layoffs, operates Horizon Worlds and developed the Quest headsets.

These layoffs follow major increases in spending on AI across the tech industry, including Meta. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that the company planned to nearly double its AI spending in 2026 to up to $135 billion. That would nearly equal the $140 billion in total that the company has spent over the last three years.

However, Meta has seen its share of struggles with AI, even with significant investment. The company’s new foundational model, codenamed Avocado, is reportedly delayed after failing to surpass Google’s Gemini 3.0 capabilities in early testing.

Still, as companies across the industry increasingly pour billions into AI spending, they’ve simultaneously been announcing major rounds of layoffs. In January, Amazon announced it would cut 16,000 jobs, while Microsoft cut more than 15,000 roles in 2025.