Californians watching the state’s tech sector closely are asking the same question this week: How deep will Meta’s newest round of layoffs go—and what does it signal about the company’s shifting priorities?
As Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram and is headed by Mark Zuckerberg, pulls back from its costly metaverse ambitions and doubles down on artificial intelligence, the company has confirmed plans to cut hundreds of jobs in California, marking another major restructuring at one of the state’s most influential tech employers.
The latest filings show significant reductions inside Reality Labs—the division once central to Meta’s metaverse vision—as the company reallocates resources toward AI models, infrastructure and next‑generation computing.
California’s WARN notice revealed that the company intended to permanently lay off 272 employees by March 20, 2026. The company will specifically cut ties with 53 employees at its Playa Vista location in Los Angeles County and 219 employees at its Burlingame location in San Mateo County.
Here’s what to know about Meta’s layoffs.
Beyond California, Meta filed a WARN notice in Washington, revealing that it would lay off 331 employees across the state. According to the notice, employees are expected to receive their benefits and pay up until the day they separate from the company.
The notice did not include information about any potential severance packages being offered by the company. The affected positions ranged from game developers, data engineers, software engineers, AI researchers and more across several of the company’s departments, for the Metaverse Content Group, Horizon OS, and Reality Lab Group, to name a few.
USA Today reached out to Meta for comment regarding the layoffs, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
In 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would be changing its name from Facebook to Meta, to reflect its growing focus on the metaverse. As part of the company’s transition, it invested heavily in Reality Labs, formerly known as Oculus VR, to support the research and development of virtual and augmented reality hardware and software.
Meta initially invested $10 billion into the company to fund its research into new technologies. However, the company’s 2024 fourth-quarter earnings revealed that Meta had lost more than $60 billion in operating costs.
“Our outlook reflects an expectation for continued strong ad revenue growth, partially offset by lower year-over-year Reality Labs revenue in the fourth quarter,” reads the company’s 2025 third-quarter report.
Meta will announce its 2025 fourth-quarter earnings on Jan. 28, 2026, and continue its focus on developing the company’s AI capabilities.
“We are at an exciting point for our company, where we have continued runway to improve our core services today as well as the opportunity to build new AI-powered experiences and services that will transform how people engage with our products in the future,” Meta said in its 2025 third-quarter report. “Next year will enable us to continue to deliver strong revenue growth in 2026, while our progress on AI models and products will position us to capitalize on new revenue opportunities in the years to come.”
The company’s new AI lab, Meta Platforms, had rapidly developed a “high-profile model” months after its launch. Although Bosworth did not provide an example of this new AI platform at the Davos event, he noted that it showed “a lot of promise,” according to Reuters.
