Mark Zuckerberg planned to replace thousands of Meta staff with AI, plan collapsed

techAug 26, 2026182,667

Mark Zuckerberg pushed a plan to make Meta “AI native” that would have replaced thousands of employees and cut the size of many teams by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show. The reorganization leaned on an “AI-Native Playbook” that restructured work into small pods with pooled specialists and envisioned AI agents doing much of day-to-day work. Engineering and infrastructure teams raised reliability warnings as an internal surge in AI coding coincided with a 40% spike in major technical and security incidents, including service disruptions and possible data leaks. Executives' experiments produced weak productivity gains from the AI agents and provoked a staff revolt, and hours before the first planned layoff wave the company scaled the plan back. Zuckerberg discussed the thinking behind the reorganization at an April 30, 2026 town hall, but Reuters reports the combination of technical failures and employee pushback collapsed the replacement plan. Meta has paused the aggressive cuts and is reassessing how to integrate AI without the broad staff reductions originally envisioned.

lauren

@lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com

www.engadget.com/2244816/meta... ok yeah the boom's over if this loser has figured it out

232444d ago

lauren1244

now make hard drive prices normal again you jags

Miles Klee 🦉168

“never mind, we’ll just focus on the pervert glasses”

Chicken Puppet 🏳️‍⚧️139

Has anyone noticed that everything this guy makes stinks and doesn't work? Is it just me?

jax.mom67

AI evangelicists all across corporate america about to be hit with the

Asher in five28

How much do they pay Zuck these days to reorient the entire company around chasing money-losing fads?

Will 🦈 // none houses with left grief19

love seeing the writing on the wall and still being told by my dumbass company leadership to put ai in everything

Quoting this

Kim McCauley33

AI CEOs thinking about the rate of model improvements in 2023

Mr. Hands is making SuccuDeck 😈🃏29

Meta abandoned their plan to fire most of their humans when they discovered they traded 220% more code output for 70% more time spent fixing technical and security incidents

Jake Williams24

That sound you're hearing is a bubble popping...

Red Durkin13

If an idea is so bad Mark Zuckerberg decides to stop spending money on it, it's bad bad.

FlyersGoalScoredBy13

hootin' and hollerin' as I post this in every slack room with an "AI-" prefix I can find. The slack mods are trying to block me.

Daniel Brim12

I’m sure “we tried to lay off 60% of you, but just kidding” is great for morale

Dragon "Gay'ed Too Close to the Sun" Fish11

How it feels calling every single one of these scams imploding frame one, three years before it happens

Jorge Ginés 🇪🇺 🌍🛰️9

Es increíble que este villano de peli de Pixar siga haciendo dinero.

Hans MLman7

I like that they crop the photo at the waist as a tribute to metaverse's lack of legs

Jimmy Quipment 🔻6

Back in the 90s a guy like this wouldve been stuffed in the toilet so hard his glasses snapped

Reuters

@reuters.com

Earlier this year, Meta planned for AI to take over much of the daily work performed by thousands of human employees, and executives explored slashing the size of many teams by as much as 60%. But just hours before the first layoff wave, the CEO blinked reut.rs/3UkZ26n

10845d ago

Jeff-NH36

Folks, this is the very conversation many companies are having. Notice the coldness as he refers to staff - simply capital, capital that are living human beings, that have families that are also being impacted.

Mary Hess27

"People Oriented Things" - how Mark Zuckerberg describes his thousands of human employees.

milsma.bsky.social14

I’ll bet AI would do zuch and executive jobs nicely. And they wouldn’t need a Hawaii retreat. 🤣

thoughtsnprayers.bsky.social4

It just spent six weeks negotiating with itself and let the market think 20% was the mercy version…

🏴‍☠️MissMudd🏴‍☠️4

What? Mark needed more castles?

nancyspantsbelt.bsky.social4

The tech villains better get ready to live in exile for financing tyranny and being assholes.👹👹👹

Quoting this

samuel3

“To make its workforce “AI native,” Meta explored slashing the size of many teams across the company by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show. Staff revolted - and hours before a big layoff in May, the CEO called off planning for further cuts.”

Guy Bailey3

Oh I wished they'd have done it. Because I want to see Meta destroyed.

Clara Jeffery

@clarajeffery.bsky.social

"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is positioning himself as a positive voice on AI, even as other tech executives warn that the technology will usher in large-scale unemployment and mass societal change." LOL, deploying that loathsome goober as your cleanup guy...good luck www.politico.com/news/2026/08...

6544d ago

Michelle 🧘🏻‍♀️2

I think it’s a great idea and they should double his public appearances.

Gergely Orosz

@gergely.pragmaticengineer.com

Full article on Reuters: www.reuters.com/investigatio... I asked two months back: why is Meta seemingly deliberately destroying its engineering organization? This is why. My analysis, back then: newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/why-is-met...

3445d ago

Quoting this

Aram Zucker-Scharff5

oh wow Ok, so Mark Zuckerburg straight up does not know or understand how AI works or what it is actually capable of doing huh.

Social Media Lab

@socialmedialab.ca

Other companies will soon learn that, for many things, we still need a human in the loop. "Mark Zuckerberg had a bold plan to replace Meta staff with AI. Here’s how it imploded." www.reuters.com/investigatio...

1545d ago

Eric Ravenscraft

@lordravenscraft.bsky.social

wait, i can't possibly be reading this right, can i? their plan was to train an AI to do employees' jobs by... watching what they clicked on all day? as though that would give them all the information they would need to replace an entire human being???

Sometimes, Al-driven restructuring goes about as well as an Al-assisted legal brief. Reuters reports that Meta spent much of this year testing a plan in which Al would take over many of the workforce's daily tasks. Dubbed Project OT, the plan appears to connect two stories from earlier this year: Meta's 10 percent workforce reduction and the company's program that tracked employees' mouse

movements and keystrokes.

2144d ago

Notorious RBMK

@comraderobot.bsky.social

mark zuckerberg might have the worst instincts of all these fuckin guys around “ai” and that is really saying something www.reuters.com/investigatio...

2044d ago

Techmeme

@techmeme.com

Investigation: Meta explored slashing many teams by ~60% to become "AI native", but pulled back after staff revolted and data showed AI agents were ineffective (Katie Paul/Reuters) Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

1345d ago

Jesse Felder

@jessefelder.com

‘As early as March, infrastructure teams were warning of “reliability warning signs” caused by the AI coding surge. Major technical and security incidents, such as service disruptions and possible data leaks, spiked 40% from the previous year.’ www.reuters.com/investigatio...

1144d ago

Quoting this

Dalibor Topić4

„Amid the rebellion, other internal data indicated that the tech at the heart of the plan wasn’t delivering. Employees’ use of AI had resulted in a vast increase in the code they generated, but with questionable impact on productivity, according to internal posts seen by Reuters.“ 🫠

Joshua Foust 🪖🎮

@joshuafoust.com

Basically, I don’t think you should ever assume Meta (Zuckerberg) is ever acting in good faith, with anyone’s best interests at heart, ever.

1545d ago

Edmund Lee

@edmundlee.bsky.social

Mark Zuckerberg wanted to slash Meta staff by as much as 60% by using AI, according to documents sourced by @reuters.com www.reuters.com/investigatio...

945d ago

kamimagic

@kamimagic.bsky.social

And we know where he's getting the money... Meta wants to use AI as a replacement. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

544d ago

Melinda Magpie 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇵🇸 The Bad Mother

@melindamagpie.bsky.social

Inside the AI shitshow, and why it will come crashing down: www.reuters.com/investigatio...

744d ago

Json Momoa

@jotatx.eurosky.social

suckerberg wanted to replace 60% of META's staff with A.I.; given that this corporation fails to show it's social use and mostly is at the center of political scandals, kids harm, fascistic abuses worldwide, etc. I'd recommend to shutdown them. burn them to the ground (the buildings, ok?).

445d ago

SkynetAndChill.com

@druce.ai

Meta's Project OT plan to replace thousands of employees with AI agents collapsed after internal revolt and weak productivity gains.

445d ago

1 source

reuters.comMark Zuckerberg had a bold plan to replace Meta staff with AI. Here’s how it imploded.

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Mark Zuckerberg planned to replace thousands of Meta staff with AI, plan collapsed

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