Meta generated around $200 billion in sales in 2025 – almost entirely from advertising. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to transform the group into an “AI First” company and is investing over 135 billion in artificial intelligence. The price: Thousands of employees lose their jobs while AI agents are supposed to take over their tasks. We look at how far the restructuring has already progressed and what that means for the future of Meta. A commentary analysis.
200 billion in sales – and still a problem
- Meta – the umbrella company for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – had consolidated sales of 2025 $200 billion achieved. In the fourth quarter alone it was almost 60 billion US dollars. This corresponds to growth of over 20 percent compared to the previous year. However, there was a decline in profit from $62.36 to $60.46 billion due to high expenses.
- The problem with these numbers: Meta’s only source of income is its own advertising business. Almost 98 percent of sales and profits come from stupid ads from underwear models and dubious financial experts. In 2021, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg had the crazy idea that a Metaverse could be the next gold vein. Five years later it is clear: The fun, virtual 3D worlds burned $80 billion.
- In order to create some short-term buffer, Mark Zuckerberg is turning it around Thumbscrews of his employees tighter – and quickly dismisses 8,000 employees with an email. At the end of 2019, Meta still had around 45,000 employees – three years later there were almost 90,000 colleagues during the Corona boom. A doubling in a very short time. Now it will expensive human resource gradually replaced by technology. Artificial intelligence instead of human intelligence.
Why Meta hasn’t stopped firing since 2022
This continues a sad trend: the disease of the chronic layoffs has infected the human body of the Meta Corporation. It started in November 2022 with a cut of 11,000 jobs. In spring 2023: another 10,000 jobs. Two years later: around 3,500 job cuts for better performance. The current wave of layoffs shows that the end has not yet been reached.
The fact that Meta’s number of employees is still comparatively stable is due to Mark Zuckerberg employs numerous experts in artificial intelligence. And not only that: Mark Zuckerberg also buys AMD chips and other AI technology: the company boss pumped a total of over 135 billion US dollars into artificial intelligence in 2025 alone.
Mark Zuckerberg’s next fantasy – errr – vision after the Metaverse is that his company will become one “AI First” company developed. Or to put it another way: Mark Zuckerberg is looking at how many people (i.e. costs) he can replace with AI (i.e. mindless employees without a union or opinion).
Interestingly, Zuckerberg doesn’t shy away from his own post either. As several media reports, in the A CEO clone bot was hatched in secret AI laboratorieswho is trained with the mannerisms, speaking habits, statements and opinions of Mark Zuckerberg. The result is a digital image that is intended to trick human psychology: We humans absorb messages better when they are conveyed by voices and faces we know.
What Meta’s AI boss says about the layoffs
- Alexandr Wang is Chief AI Officer for the further development of AI strategy at Meta responsible. In October 2025, he justified being fired from the “Meta Superintelligence Labs” (MSL). In an internal memo leaked to Business Insider, he says, technically coolly: “Today we’ve made some changes at MSL to become the most agile and talented team in the industry. By shrinking our team, fewer votes will be needed to make decisions. Each person will have more responsibility (literally, more viability) and will have greater scope and influence.”
- After the job cuts were leaked by those affected in May 2026, it was seen Meta HR Manager Janelle Gale forced to intervene. The reasoning is nothing more than a technical excuse: “To be clear, we plan to reduce our workforce by approximately 8,000 positions, with notifications beginning on May 20. This is a difficult but necessary step to ensure we prioritize our key strategic goals – particularly our transition to an ‘AI-first’ organization.”
- Randy Clark, founder of the AI-focused strategy consultancy Digital Quill Partnersdiscusses the reasons for the AI-related savings in a LinkedIn article: “In seconds, AI can create product designs, compose music, simulate personalities, debug code, summarize legal briefs, and create photorealistic images. Tasks that once required days of focused human labor now happen in milliseconds – not because machines are conscious, but because they are brutally efficient at recognizing and reassembling patterns.” Nevertheless, he points out: AI has a limit – namely the energy it consumes.
Spy software is designed to identify the next jobs
As if it wasn’t challenging and questionable enough that Meta is separating from thousands of people en masse and without notice. At the same time, the group is running a Spy software a. It pursues a simple goal: an AI – what else – analyzes the working methods of the remaining employees and works out where processes can be further automated.
The insights from the tracking software are then used to train AI agents. These should carry out the developed areas of responsibility independently, so that only a proverbial handful of people are needed. Or as Mark Zuckerberg put it so succinctly in an interview with Spiegel in January 2026: “Where large teams were previously necessary, today one is enough very talented person“.
And that brings us full circle. Meta makes its money by marketing its users’ personal data in the best possible way. Who better to maximize the potential of data than someone or something that has itself been trained using only data. If Meta actually completes the transition to an AI company, further mass layoffs will follow. There remains a hyper-intelligent human core that empowers the increasingly smart AI Zuckerberg’s money printing machines optimized to use.
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