Meta Platforms has initiated a major restructuring exercise as the social media giant intensifies its focus on artificial intelligence to strengthen its position in the rapidly evolving AI industry.
According to reports, the company last week laid off around 8,000 employees globally while reassigning another 7,000 workers to artificial intelligence-related roles, signalling a significant operational shift towards becoming an AI-first organisation.
The restructuring comes as Meta Platforms plans to sharply increase capital expenditure, with projected spending of up to $135 billion on AI infrastructure, including advanced chips, data centres and talent acquisition.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly tasked Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth with leading the transformation. Bosworth, also known as “Boz”, currently heads Reality Labs, Meta’s wearables and metaverse division.
Reports said Meta’s leadership believes the company’s next phase of growth will be driven by artificial intelligence, with a strategic focus on computing power, infrastructure and AI talent expected to shape its long-term competitiveness.
Meta Platforms is among several major Silicon Valley technology firms placing AI at the centre of their business strategies. Earlier this month, Blackstone announced a joint venture with Google to establish a new AI cloud company, with Blackstone committing $5 billion in equity investment.
The proposed venture is expected to provide data centre capacity, networking services and access to Google Cloud’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as part of a compute-as-a-service offering.
Industry focus is increasingly shifting from chatbot-based AI systems to agentic AI, which is capable of operating autonomously and performing tasks without relying solely on user prompts.
As part of its internal AI strategy, Meta has reportedly informed employees through an internal memo that it plans to introduce a tracking system on company computers and applications to monitor keystrokes and mouse activity for training AI models to automate certain functions.
According to reports citing internal communications, Bosworth also told employees that the company would accelerate internal data collection efforts under its “AI for Work” initiative, now rebranded as the Agent Transformation Accelerator (ATA).
He reportedly said the company is moving towards a future where AI agents will carry out a substantial portion of operational tasks, while employees will focus on directing, reviewing and refining their outputs.
Bosworth had earlier led Zuckerberg’s metaverse initiative, which attracted significant investment but failed to achieve the expected commercial traction. Despite that, he continues to play a central role in Meta’s strategic push towards artificial intelligence.
(ANI Inputs)
