Will Meta lose money by laying off 20% of its workforce?

1 pointsby alanjacobsonقبل 4 أشهر1 comments

Meta is reportedly planning layoffs of up to 20% of its workforce as it ramps up spending on AI infrastructure.

The assumption seems straightforward: fewer employees + more AI = higher efficiency and better margins.

But AI introduces a different cost structure.

Inference is a usage-based cost — it scales with every feed ranking, ad decision, and user interaction. Meanwhile, AI infrastructure spending flows into cost of revenue over time through depreciation.

In several public companies, cost of revenue has already started rising faster than revenue following AI rollout, with early signs of margin compression.

This raises a question:

If AI shifts cost from fixed labor to variable compute, is it possible that replacing humans with AI could reduce margins rather than improve them?

And if inference cost scales with usage, should AI systems be deciding whether to run at all based on expected value?

1 comments

techblueberryقبل 4 أشهر

I don’t think this is about saving money, I think it’s about saving the business.

And by the business I don’t mean Facebook as a product that makes social networks is going to cease to exist.

I think the problem is all the valuations in software aren’t just based on growth but hypergrowth. Doing this solves two problems. Leans out the company and places a moonshot bet. If it doesn’t work out you’ve leaned out the company to survive. If it does you keep the hypergrow going.