Meta is preparing to cut roughly 10 per cent of its global workforce this week as the Facebook and Instagram owner accelerates a sweeping internal overhaul centred on artificial intelligence and automation.

Employees across North America have reportedly been instructed to work from home on Wednesday while the company carries out the latest round of job reductions, which are expected to affect thousands of workers globally.

According to internal company documents seen by Reuters, staff impacted by the cuts will be notified via email from 4am local time in their respective regions. The layoffs are expected to unfold in several stages alongside broader organisational changes designed to reshape how teams operate around AI development.

Meta chief people officer Janelle Gale told employees that the restructuring would also involve the reassignment of around 7,000 workers into new AI-focused initiatives while management layers across the company are reduced.

The company is increasingly restructuring teams around what executives describe as “AI-native” operating models. Internal memos suggest Meta plans to rely on flatter organisational structures made up of smaller groups intended to move more quickly and operate with greater autonomy.

The latest changes form part of a much larger transformation underway at Meta as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pushes aggressively into artificial intelligence infrastructure, AI agents and workplace automation.

Meta is forecast to spend as much as A$222 billion this year on capital expenditure, driven heavily by AI data centre expansion and rising hardware costs linked to memory demand.

The restructuring will reportedly affect about 20 per cent of Meta’s workforce overall when combining layoffs, transfers and role eliminations. Company filings show Meta employed nearly 78,000 people at the end of March.

The latest cuts continue Zuckerberg’s broader campaign to simplify management structures inside the company. Meta previously eliminated more than 20,000 jobs across 2022 and 2023 during what Zuckerberg famously labelled the company’s “year of efficiency”.

Several of the new internal divisions receiving transferred employees are tied directly to Meta’s growing AI ambitions. Teams including Applied AI Engineering and Agent Transformation Accelerator are focused on building AI agents capable of autonomously handling tasks traditionally carried out by human workers.

Another unit known as Central Analytics is expected to focus on measuring productivity and analysing AI agent performance.

The company’s increasingly aggressive push into AI automation has generated significant internal tension. Reports suggest many employees remain frustrated by both the scale of the restructuring and Meta’s handling of communication around the layoffs.

Workers have reportedly protested the changes through internal posts, office flyers and petitions circulated across Workplace, Meta’s internal communications platform.

More than 1,000 employees are said to have signed a petition criticising the company’s use of mouse-tracking software intended to help train AI systems to better replicate human computer interactions.

Some staff have also publicly challenged executives over privacy concerns related to the tracking technology and management’s prolonged silence surrounding the layoffs after reports of the cuts first emerged.

According to examples seen by Reuters, employees spent weeks responding to executive posts with elephant images in reference to what they described as the “elephant in the room” regarding the expected redundancies.

One employee told the San Francisco Standard that the atmosphere inside the company had become increasingly tense as workers waited to learn whether they would lose their jobs.

Meta has previously said affected employees will receive severance packages that include at least 16 weeks of base pay, with additional compensation linked to years of service. Healthcare coverage and career transition support are also expected to be provided.

The latest reductions come amid a wider wave of AI-related job losses across the technology industry. Data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed the tech sector recorded 52,050 layoffs during the first quarter of 2026, representing a 40 per cent increase compared with the same period last year.

Artificial intelligence was listed as a contributing factor behind 15,341 tech layoffs in March alone, accounting for roughly one-quarter of all job cuts announced during the month.