Meta is cutting roughly 8,000 jobs and scrapping hiring plans for 6,000 roles, amounting to about 10% of its total workforce. The cuts hit hardest at Reality Labs and metaverse teams, as the company pivots to generative AI.
Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion this year on AI infrastructure, including GPU clusters and data centers. This comes after posting $26 billion in net income in Q1 2026, signaling the cuts are strategic, not reactive.
The metaverse, once central to Meta's identity, has been downgraded. Reality Labs suffered billions in losses, and Meta is now pulling back from third-party content moderation, shifting to AI.
For crypto, Meta's pivot removes the largest source of legitimacy for metaverse tokens like Decentraland and The Sandbox. Meanwhile, AI-adjacent tokens are absorbing speculative capital. The $145 billion AI spend also concentrates GPU supply, making decentralized AI projects both more compelling and more resource-constrained.