Meta drew up plans to cut some teams by 60 percent in a push to run on AI
An internal project called 'Organisation Transformation' mapped out deep headcount reductions. Meta confirmed the plan existed but has not said which teams were in scope.
Key points
- Meta created an internal plan, codenamed Project OT, to cut some team headcounts by as much as 60 percent, according to Reuters.
- The plan called for two separate rounds of layoffs as part of a wider push to make Meta "AI native".
- Meta confirmed Project OT existed but declined to say which teams it covered.
- The plan appears to have been shelved; Reuters described it as something Meta "created" earlier this year, not something currently active.
Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, spent part of this year working on a detailed plan to reduce some of its workforce teams by up to 60 percent, Ars Technica first reported, citing two people familiar with the company's internal workings.
The plan had a name: Project OT, short for Organisation Transformation. Its goal was to make Meta "AI native", meaning a company whose core work is carried out by artificial intelligence systems rather than by the humans who do those jobs today.
What exactly did Meta plan to do?
Project OT mapped out two separate rounds of layoffs. The size of the cuts depended on the team, but the most severe scenarios reached 60 percent of a team's headcount. That would mean a department of 100 people shrinking to 40.
Meta confirmed the plan to Reuters. The company would not say which teams were targeted, or whether any cuts under this project have already happened.
The confirmation matters. Internal strategy documents float around large tech companies all the time and never become policy. Meta choosing to acknowledge this one suggests it was serious planning, not a whiteboard exercise.
What does "AI native" actually mean for workers?
It means replacing human labour with AI systems, not just adding AI tools on top of existing jobs. The gap between those two things is large.
Adding an AI tool might help a marketing team write faster. Going "AI native" in that same team could mean deciding the team needs three people instead of thirty, because software handles the rest.
Meta is not alone in thinking this way. Across the technology industry, companies are actively testing how many tasks AI can take over, and adjusting headcount plans accordingly. The hard question, which no company has cleanly answered yet, is which tasks genuinely get better when AI handles them and which quietly get worse.
Should employees at big tech companies be worried?
The short answer is: this is worth watching closely. Meta's plan, as described, was exploratory, and the company has not confirmed it triggered any specific job losses.
But the direction of travel is clear. When a company the size of Meta formally models 60 percent reductions in some teams, that modelling eventually shapes real decisions, even if the first version gets shelved.
For anyone whose job involves repeatable, text-based or data-processing work, the practical move is to understand which parts of your role AI already handles well at other companies, and to build skills around the parts it handles poorly: judgment, relationships, accountability, context.
Common questions
Did Meta actually carry out these layoffs?
Meta has not confirmed any layoffs directly tied to Project OT. The plan appears to have been a scenario-planning exercise; whether it led to cuts in specific teams is not yet known.
What does it mean for a company to go "AI native"?
It means building the company around AI doing the core work, rather than humans using AI as a supporting tool. In practice, it usually means fewer employees doing tasks that software can now handle.
