Facebook parent company Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company globally, according to Reuters.
Meta is reportedly seeking to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets and is preparing for greater efficiency brought about by AI-assisted workers.
No date has been set for the cuts and the magnitude has not been finalised, sources said.
Meta employs around 1,800 people in Ireland and it is not yet known what impact the reported cuts would have on its Irish operation.
"This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches," a Meta Ireland spokesperson said.
Irish-based staff were impacted by a redundancy announcement in January last year, when Meta said it would cut around 5% of its "lowest performing" staff globally.
The company previously cut around 840 jobs in Ireland with rounds of redundancies in November 2022 and again in May 2023.
If Meta proceeds with a 20% cut, the layoffs will be the company's most significant since a restructuring in late 2022 and early 2023 that it dubbed the "year of efficiency".
It employed nearly 79,000 people as of 31 December, according to its latest filing.
Over the last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing Meta to compete more forcefully in generative AI.
The company has said it plans to invest $600 billion to build data centres by 2028.
Mr Zuckerberg has alluded to efficiency gains from the investments, saying in January he was starting to see "projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person".
Meta's plans reflect a broader pattern of AI-related job cuts among major US tech companies.
In January, Amazon confirmed it would cut 16,000 jobs globally, impacting around 300 roles in Ireland.
Last month, the financial technology company Block cut nearly half of its staff, with CEO Jack Dorsey explicitly pointing to AI tools and their growing capability to help companies do more with smaller teams.
Additional reporting by Reuters
