Meta Cuts Nearly 200 Bay Area Jobs, Citing AI-Driven Restructuring

Meta permanently eliminated 198 positions at its Bay Area offices in Burlingame and Sunnyvale, state filings show, bringing the company's confirmed California job losses this year to at least 519 as it redirects up to $135 billion toward artificial intelligence infrastructure.

The cuts, 124 positions at Meta's Airport Boulevard facility in Burlingame and 74 at its Discovery Way office in Sunnyvale, were disclosed in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings submitted to California's Employment Development Department on April 3. Chief People Officer Janelle Gale signed the notice, which states that "separations resulting from this action are expected to be permanent." Affected workers cannot displace colleagues based on seniority, none of the 198 employees hold union representation, and every position is being permanently closed, not paused. The Burlingame layoffs take effect May 22; Sunnyvale follows May 29.

The targeted roles span Meta's sales, recruiting, and Reality Labs hardware teams at both locations. A company spokesperson said: "Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they're in the best position to achieve their goals. Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted." Meta has not publicly specified which individual job functions were eliminated or whether any roles will be backfilled through contractors rather than eliminated outright, leaving affected workers without a clear picture of how the restructuring changes operations at either site.

These notices are the third distinct wave of Bay Area reductions Meta has disclosed in 2026. Earlier this year, the company cut roughly 150 Bay Area jobs in separate rounds; in March, approximately 700 employees were let go nationally across Facebook, global operations, recruiting, sales, and Reality Labs. In January, about 1,500 Reality Labs workers were dismissed, representing 10 percent of that division's 15,000-person staff. Since 2022, Meta has cut approximately 25,000 employees in total, including 11,000 in November of that year and another 10,000 during CEO Mark Zuckerberg's declared "Year of Efficiency" in 2023.

The acceleration is inseparable from Meta's AI spending strategy. Zuckerberg committed $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures for 2025 alone, targeting more than 1.3 million GPUs and approximately one gigawatt of compute. The company has projected capital expenditures between $115 billion and $135 billion for 2026, and a $10 billion data center in El Paso, Texas is already in planning. Zuckerberg has called 2026 "a turning point for AI in the world."

That pivot carries a direct human cost. Matt Britton, author of "Generation AI," put it plainly: "When a company is cutting hundreds of people and at the same time gearing up to spend $135 billion on AI, it's sending a very clear message: the center of gravity is shifting from human-powered operations to machine-augmented operations."

The arithmetic at Reality Labs sharpens that point. The division posted a $6.02 billion operating loss on just $955 million in revenue in 2025, and Meta has warned losses will remain at comparable levels this year. Yet even as Reality Labs bleeds, Meta's overall headcount reached 78,865 as of December 31, 2025, a 6 percent year-over-year increase, suggesting the company is selectively shedding operational roles while adding AI-oriented ones elsewhere. Reuters has reported that Zuckerberg is personally weighing cuts that could ultimately reach more than 20 percent of the global workforce, roughly 15,000 additional workers.

The Bay Area absorbed 137,200 tech job losses between 2023 and 2025. Industrywide, more than 152,000 workers were laid off in 2024, followed by at least 118,000 more in 2025.

Workers affected by the Burlingame and Sunnyvale cuts can file for unemployment insurance immediately through California's Employment Development Department at edd.ca.gov. The EDD also connects laid-off workers to no-cost rapid-response services, including resume support and retraining referrals, through its America's Job Centers of California network; the San Mateo County center, which covers Burlingame, is reachable through the county's workforce development portal. San Francisco residents navigating tech-sector displacement can contact the SF Office of Economic and Workforce Development at oewd.org, which maintains a pipeline of tech-focused retraining and job-placement programs. Under California's updated 2026 WARN rules, employers filing layoff notices are now required to state whether they will coordinate retraining support with local workforce boards; whether Meta's April 3 filing met that threshold has not been publicly confirmed.