The first Big Tech layoffs of 2026 have happened. This week, Facebook owner Meta Platforms reportedly informed employees that up to 1,500 positions in its Reality Labs division would be eliminated. Here’s what you need to know about the job cuts.
What’s happened?
Meta this week notified employees in its Reality Labs division that up to 10% of jobs could be lost, according to a Bloomberg report. A day earlier, the New York Times reported that the layoffs were expected.
Reality Labs is a division of the social media giant primarily responsible for developing the company’s augmented and virtual reality products. The division was responsible for spearheading Meta’s failed metaverse virtual-reality world.
How many jobs are being lost?
An exact figure is not known, but according to media reports, Meta is aiming to cut about 10% of its Reality Labs workforce. The division reportedly employs about 15,000 workers, so a 10% reduction equates to around 1,500 jobs lost.
Bloomberg reviewed an internal post to Meta’s employees from the company’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth. In that post, Bosworth announced the 10% layoff estimate.
Fast Company has reached out to Meta for comment.
Why is Meta laying off workers?
In the internal post Bosworth sent to employees, the CTO reportedly announced that Meta was shifting its priorities away from virtual and augmented reality, while metaverse resources will focus more on mobile device experiences as opposed to VR headsets.
At the same time, Bosworth also confirmed that Meta was looking to cut back on its investments in virtual reality (VR) in order to make its business “more sustainable.”
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the company plans “to reinvest the savings [from the Reality Labs cuts] to support the growth of wearables this year.”
The metaverse never took off
The fact that Meta is reprioritizing its areas of focus to AI and mobile is of little surprise to those familiar with the company’s metaverse virtual world initiatives.
In 2021, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media company, formerly known as Facebook, would be pivoting to the next frontier of technology: virtual worlds.
In October of that year, Zuckerberg announced the metaverse, and was so certain that the future of tech was VR that he even decided to change the company’s name from Facebook to Meta.
But in the more than four years since Meta went all-in on the metaverse, consumer interest in virtual reality worlds never developed beyond a niche appeal. Moreover, the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022 made clear that the next era of computing was AI, not VR.
Since then, Meta has gone all-in on AI, and its metaverse products have languished as a result.
Shares of Meta Platforms (Nasdaq: META) were down more than 2% in midday trading on Tuesday after the news broke.
Meta’s job cuts are the largest tech layoffs of 2026 so far
The Reality Labs job cuts have earned Meta the distinction of having the largest layoff round of any prominent tech company in 2026 so far.
Many in the tech industry—particularly those working in non-AI sectors and divisions—will now likely be wondering whether other companies will follow suit and eliminate jobs in legacy divisions as tech firms continue to go all-in on AI development.
According to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, total tech layoffs in 2025 resulted in neqrly 124,00 jobs lost at 269 tech companies.
While significant, the annual level of tech job layoffs has been decreasing since 2022, according to the site. In 2022, there were more than 165,000 tech layoffs. That number rose to nearly 265,000 in 2023, before falling to around 152,000 in 2024.
