The Metaverse platform company has formally notified thousands of employees of impending layoffs. This action forms part of a previously announced organizational restructuring plan, aimed at strictly controlling costs while heavily concentrating investments in the field of artificial intelligence.

The company began issuing layoff notifications to employees worldwide early Wednesday, starting with staff in Asia at 4:00 AM Singapore Time. According to an internal memo, employees in the United States are also scheduled to receive related notifications throughout the morning local time.

This global workforce reduction involves approximately 8,000 employees. The company has advised staff to work from home to facilitate a smooth transition. Informed sources indicate that this round of layoffs primarily affects engineering and product teams, with further personnel streamlining potentially occurring later in the year.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Professor of Economics and Behavioral Science at the University of Oxford, commented: "Companies that aggressively pursue automation and cut human resources at the first opportunity may gradually lose their appeal as workplaces. While this can reduce costs in the short term, it may undermine employees' sense of belonging and motivation, ultimately harming the company's long-term development potential."

Previously, on Monday, the Metaverse platform had reassigned approximately 7,000 employees to a newly established specialized artificial intelligence team, primarily focused on AI-related products and intelligent agent projects. The company has already committed over one hundred billion dollars in capital expenditure for artificial intelligence this year. Prior to these personnel transfers and layoffs, its total workforce at the end of March was less than 80,000 employees.

Janelle Gale, Head of Human Resources at the Metaverse platform, stated in an internal memo: "At this stage, most business units can adopt a flatter organizational structure, forming lean, small teams to enhance decision-making and execution efficiency, and to clarify roles and responsibilities. We believe this model can increase overall productivity while improving the employee work experience."

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has designated artificial intelligence as the company's top strategic priority, mobilizing all resources to compete with industry rivals such as Google and OpenAI. This has also necessitated adjustments to the company's personnel structure and operational model.

In recent years, under Zuckerberg's continuous push for cost reduction and efficiency improvement, the Metaverse platform has undergone multiple rounds of layoffs. He strongly advocates for engineers to utilize AI assistants to aid in programming and various tasks, and plans to optimize related technologies through data from employee work devices. He has personally been involved in developing an AI office assistant to collect employee feedback and handle some routine executive tasks.