Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently gave an update on ‘Meta’s 4 am layoff email’ to employees during earnings call. In May this year, Meta fired roughly 8,000 employees. Thousands of employees across the globe received email from Meta leadership informing that their role has been eliminated. The email sent to impacted employees, obtained by Business Insider, gave details on severance, visas, and access to company systems. It said that employee access has been cut, but laid-off employees can check all details on Alumni portal, which they can access within an hour of losing system access. Meta reported Q2 revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28% year-over-year (27% on a constant currency basis). However, total expenses surged 55% to $42 billion, driven by higher employee compensation, infrastructure costs, legal-related charges, and third-party AI token expenses.
Mark Zuckerberg addressed ‘4 am layoff email’ during earnings call
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the company’s widely discussed “4 AM layoff email” during the earnings call, noting that Q2 expenses included $1.2 billion in severance costs tied to the May 2026 headcount reduction. An additional $2.4 billion in legal charges also weighed on results. Meta ended the quarter with over 75,000 employees, down 3% from Q1, including approximately 8,000 impacted by the layoffs. The company expects most of those employees will no longer be counted in its headcount by the end of Q3.“We ended Q2 with over 75,000 employees, down 3% from Q1. This total includes approximately 8,000 employees impacted by the May 2026 headcount reduction. We expect the majority of impacted employees will no longer be captured in our headcount by the end of Q3 2026,” said Zuckerberg.Zuckerberg also explained that growth in employee compensation was largely driven by technical hires, particularly in AI. Infrastructure costs rose due to higher depreciation, data center operations, and third-party cloud spending.
Operating income impact
Meta’s GAAP operating income for the quarter was $18.8 billion, representing an 8% decline year-over-year and a 31% operating margin. Excluding severance and legal charges, operating income would have increased 9% compared to last year.“We expect the majority of impacted employees will no longer be captured in our headcount by the end of Q3 2026. Second quarter GAAP operating income was $18.8 billion, representing an 8% decline year-over-year and a 31% operating margin. Excluding the Q2 legal charges and severance expenses, our second quarter operating income would have increased 9% year-over-year,” added Zuckerberg.
After layoff of 8,000 employees, Meta CEO spends $130 billion on AI
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a message for anyone anxious about AI taking their job: the technology is actually hiring. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal hours before Meta’s June quarter earnings, Zuckerberg said that “all the work around AI has net created a lot of jobs because there’s all this infrastructure that needs to get created,” adding that fears of mass displacement haven’t “played out the way that people feared it might.“It’s a claim that invites an obvious question, because the company making it spent this year doing the opposite. Meta laid off 8,000 employees—about 10 per cent of its workforce—in May as part of an AI-first restructuring, reassigned another 7,000 to AI initiatives, and is on track to spend between $130 billion and $145 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, roughly double last year’s outlay. Zuckerberg isn’t wrong that AI is creating jobs. They just aren’t the ones his own company eliminated.
