Meta's secret plan to cut 60% of some teams with AI: Report

Mark Zuckerberg's January retreat in Hawaii produced more than a strategy memo. According to internal documents reviewed by Reuters, it produced a blueprint, code-named Project OT, for shrinking parts of Meta's workforce by as much as 60% and handing much of the remaining work to AI agents.

Executives sketched out a company where AI-ready tools would run workflows with minimal human oversight, backed by smaller, "talent-dense" teams managing the technology rather than doing the underlying work themselves. 

Two restructuring waves were mapped out, the first set for May and a second planned for November.

Meta executives, such as Chief Data Officer Alex Schultz and Head of Product Naomi Gleit, had spent considerable time observing how Asian startups built their operations using AI technology before coming back to implement something similar at Meta.

Pilot projects were soon launched with "pods" of two or three engineers coupled with one designer, operating within four-week sprints rather than typical six-month cycles of Meta. 

At least 11 teams at Meta were using pods by June based on reports from internal announcements seen by Reuters.

Meta had already laid off 10% of its workforce in May as planned. But just hours prior to implementing that, Zuckerberg supposedly changed his mind regarding the second round of layoffs.

By then, employees were openly questioning whether the "AI native" push was really about replacing them, and internal data was reportedly showing that autonomous AI agents weren't delivering the productivity gains executives had counted on.

Meta confirmed Project OT existed and that scenarios involving 60% team reductions were explored, but said the company never intended to cut 60% of its total workforce and that thousands of employees were ultimately redeployed rather than let go. 

Reuters says it couldn't determine exactly what changed Zuckerberg's mind, or what Meta's next move on restr

ucturing will be.