Perhaps the biggest threat to our jobs isn’t AI—but other, more talented people. Or so seems to be the case with Meta’s latest batch of layoffs.

The tech giant is about to cut thousands of employees as part of a larger effort to phase out “low-performers” and rope in fresh meat for its AI expansion, Bloomberg reports.

Impacted workers were notified via email earlier today. According to Bloomberg’s sources, Meta is handing severance packages that include 16 weeks of pay in addition to two weeks of additional pay for each year of service. Employees with performance reviews that merited a bonus are expected to still get one and staffers are still entitled to stock awards as part of the upcoming vesting cycle later this month.

U.S. employees will be first to be notified of the layoffs, with international colleagues expected to be informed later, although when the timeline for that is uncertain.

Meta’s AI Ambitions At The Core Of The Layoffs

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg announced the cuts will affect about 5% of the workforce—about 3,600 people—starting with hires that “aren’t meeting expectations.” The plan is to use the resources from the layoffs to power its AI development and focus on securing the “strongest talent.”

After a long streak of staving off layoffs, this marks yet another round of cuts at Meta. Notably, the company parted ways with thousands of employees in 2022 and 2023.

For his part, Zuckerberg has previously spoken about Meta’s plans to inject billions into building out its AI infrastructure, which will power multiple products and services across its lineup, including but not limited to Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Threads.

Meta Eyeing The AI Competition

That’s hardly a surprise considering the speed at which Meta’s rivals like Amazon, Google and OpenAI are accelerating their AI efforts. DeepSeek’s entry into the fray has only further heated up the AI race for supremacy.

As Sam Altman reflected in a recently penned essay on AI, “the intelligence of an AI model roughly equals the log of the resources used to train and run it.” Zuckerberg seems to be of the same mind—hence why Meta is shuffling spending around to lure in more AI talent.