Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admits AI strategy 'miscalculated' after 8,000 layoffs

Mark Zuckerberg told employees at an internal town hall this week that Meta's AI agents have not advanced as quickly as leadership expected, according to a recording heard by Reuters.

The admission lands nearly two months after Meta cut about 8,000 jobs, roughly 10% of its global workforce, and reassigned another 7,000 employees to AI-focused teams.

Zuckerberg said the "trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn't really accelerated in the way that we expected," adding that the company's restructuring bets "haven't come to fruition yet."

He acknowledged the reorganization wasn't as "clean" as it should have been and said executives had miscalculated the timing of the changes. He told staff he expects meaningful benefits from Meta's AI investments within three to six months.

Notably, Zuckerberg said executives were "super optimistic" earlier this year about tools like Claude Code from Anthropic when they began planning the restructuring in January and February. Those conversations, he said, were driven by fear that Meta wasn't moving fast enough to keep pace. The company is projected to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year.

At the same town hall, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said a review of the company's paused mouse-tracking software found no employee data had been used in AI training. If the program restarts, Bosworth said it will run on an opt-in basis, a reversal from April, when US employees were told there was no way to opt out.

The town hall follows an earlier internal memo, reported by Wired, in which Bosworth called Meta's rollout of its Applied AI division "atrocious." Staff in the 6,500-person unit, formed in March, had described the work as chaotic, with one employee calling it "a gulag."

Bosworth pledged to cap managers at 20 direct reports and invest in career development and office perks to rebuild morale.