According to the New York Times, Meta is planning to lay off between 10% and 15% of employees in its Reality Labs division, the business unit responsible for the company’s metaverse initiatives.
The layoffs are expected to be announced this week, the NYT reports. The cuts come as Meta continues to invest heavily in artificial intelligence development, potentially shifting resources away from its virtual reality and metaverse projects.
Reality Labs has been a significant cost center for Meta, though the exact number of employees affected by these planned cuts was not specified in the report. The division has been central to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of building immersive virtual worlds and next-generation computing platforms.
The workforce reduction represents the latest restructuring at Meta as the company balances its investments across multiple strategic priorities, including its core social media platforms, AI development, and Reality Labs’ hardware and software projects. The planned layoffs follow broader tech industry trends of workforce optimization and shifting resource allocation toward AI capabilities.