Goa, May 20 -- Meta is laying off about 8,000 employees worldwide as part of a restructuring to sharpen efficiency and fund heavy investments in artificial intelligence. Notifications began Wednesday morning in Singapore, with European and US staff expected to be informed in their local hours. Employees are being encouraged to work from home during the transition.

The cuts will largely affect engineering and product teams, and sources say further reductions could follow later in the year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company's top priority, pushing engineers to adopt AI agents for coding and other tasks and personally working on an AI assistant. Meta says the layoffs will help offset major AI-related expenditures.

Investors remai...