Meta begins job cuts in Israel as global layoffs in the name of AI mount |
Dozens of Meta Israel employees received dismissal notices on Wednesday, as the US tech titan embarked on a wave of layoffs aimed at trimming 10 percent of its global workforce to offset investing billions of dollars toward AI infrastructure.
As part of the global layoffs, Meta is slated to fire about 90 employees, or 10% of its workforce in Israel, primarily from its development center in Tel Aviv. The layoffs in Israel are in line with widely reported plans by Meta to cut about 8,000 employees, or 10% of global headcount.
Meta employs about 900 workers locally and operates two offices in Tel Aviv — a business hub and an R&D center established in 2013. The R&D center is one of the largest strategic development centers for the tech giant outside the US. The Tel Aviv teams develop strategic technology initiatives for Meta worldwide, including generative AI. Meta in Israel also runs a startup growth program.
The Silicon Valley tech titan that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is the latest tech heavyweight to announce fresh rounds of job cuts to tighten operations in the new automation era. This month, networking giant Cisco said 4,000 jobs would be slashed as it channeled more resources to AI, following in the footsteps of Microsoft and Coinbase, which also announced layoffs.
The wave of layoffs is also sweeping through startups and smaller tech firms in Israel.
“We are seeing startups and tech companies that are trying to use the adoption of AI as a trigger to downsize the number of workers, slim their teams, and become more efficient, which they can do, but they should do it with a plan ahead,” Tal Aspir, Head of the AI Lab at the BDO consulting firm, told The Times of Israel. “There are startups that give their........