META BEGINS CUTTING 8,000 JOBS TODAY WHILE POSTING RECORD $56 BILLION QUARTER AND SPENDING $145 BILLION ON AI Meta started notifying roughly 8,000 employees Wednesday that they no longer have jobs. An additional 6,000 open positions have been cancelled, bringing the effective headcount reduction to 14,000. The company says more cuts are coming in the second half of the year. At the same time, Meta just reported quarterly revenue of $56.31 billion, a record, and is planning to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026. This is the clearest possible illustration of what AI is doing to the labor market at the biggest tech companies. It is not about cutting costs because the company is struggling. Meta is printing money. The cuts are about redirecting human capital toward AI-focused teams. Over 7,000 workers are being moved into roles in Applied AI Engineering, agent development, and data analytics. The people being let go are in management, coordination, and operational functions that AI systems are beginning to replace. The tech sector has now recorded more than 73,000 job cuts in 2026 across nearly 100 companies. Most of those companies are profitable. PayPal is cutting 20 percent of its staff over the next three years for the same reason. The message from every major tech company is the same: AI is not coming for jobs eventually. It is doing it now. Keywords: Meta layoffs 2026, Meta AI restructuring, tech layoffs AI, Zuckerberg AI spending