Fears of further Meta Irish job cuts

Most recent data shows Meta in Ireland employs just over 1,700 in Ireland, mainly in Dublin. 

There are fears of further job cuts at Facebook owner Meta’s operations in Ireland, with reports that the IT giant is planning sweeping global layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company.

It is understood the job cuts are planned to offset costly AI infrastructure bets and prepare for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.

Most recent data shows Meta in Ireland employs just over 1,700 in Ireland, mainly in Dublin. 

A further cut of up to 20% could see the numbers working in Ireland drop to almost half of what they were at the peak, in the wake of covid pandemic.

Three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters no date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalised, the people said.

Top executives have recently signalled the plans to other senior leaders at Meta and told them to begin planning how to pare back, two of the people said. 

The sources spoke anonymously because they were not authorised to disclose the cuts.

A spokesperson for Meta in Ireland said: “This is a speculative report about theoretical approaches.”

If Meta settles on the 20% figure, the layoffs will be the company’s most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the “year of efficiency”. 

It employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31, according to its latest filing.

Meta joined other IT companies that rapidly increased their workforces as global pandemic lockdowns resulted in a surge in demand for remote working services.

According to their company filings, Meta’s employee numbers in Ireland rose from 1,944 in 2019 to a peak of 2,662 in 2022.

Meta laid of 13% of workforce in November 2022

Globally, the company laid off 11,000 staffers in November 2022, or around 13% of its workforce at the time. 

Around four months later, it announced it was cutting another 10,000 jobs. It resulted in Meta’s headcount of Irish workers dropping to 2,171 in 2023 and then 1,738 in 2024. 

According to the company’s accounts, Meta incurred severance expenses of more than €63m over this period.

Over the last year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to compete more forcefully in generative AI. 

The company has offered huge pay packages, some worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years, to court top AI researchers to a new superintelligence team.

The company has said it plans to invest $600bn (€511bn) to build data centres by 2028. Earlier this week, it acquired Moltbook, a social networking platform built for AI agents. 

Meta is also spending at least $2bn to buy Chinese AI startup Manus, Reuters previously reported.

Meta achieving efficiency gains from its investments

Zuckerberg has alluded to efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January he was starting to see “projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person”.

Meta’s plans reflect a broader pattern among major US companies, particularly in tech, this year. Executives have pointed to recent improvements in AI systems as one reason for the changes.

In January, Amazon confirmed it would cut some 16,000 jobs, amounting to nearly 10% of its workforce. 

Last month, the fintech company Block chopped nearly half of its staff, with CEO Jack Dorsey explicitly pointing to AI tools and their growing capability to help companies do more with smaller teams.

Meta’s planned AI investments follow a series of setbacks with its Llama 4 models last year, including criticism it provided misleading results on the benchmarks it used for early versions. 

It abandoned the release of the largest version of that model, called Behemoth, which had been due out in the summer.