Meta is cutting nearly 8,000 jobs as of May 20, while OpenAI plans to nearly double its headcount by the end of the year, highlighting the technology sector’s widening gap between companies cutting workers and those building the AI systems driving those cuts.
Meta’s layoffs, which affect about 10 percent of its 79,000 employees, come as more than 95,000 tech workers have lost their jobs across more than 240 separate events in 2026 so far, according to TrueUp tracking data.
The first quarter alone witnessed between 78,000 and 91,000 reductions, compared to about 30,000 in the same period last year.
Companies directly point to AI as the reason.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year that projects that previously required large teams can now be handled by “one very talented person.” Salesforce chief Marc Benioff said his support staff fell from 9,000 people to about 5,000 “because I need less heads.” Amazon’s Andy Jassy told workers that the company expects new AI tools to “reduce the company’s overall workforce as we gain efficiency gains.”
Prediction markets called Meta cuts before official news
Market bettors saw the prediction Meta cuts Before it was published by Reuters on Friday. At Polymarket, a betting platform powered by InterContinental Exchange, traders invested about $112,000 in the markets tracking Meta headcount and stock price. One market gave odds of 96 percent that Meta ended the quarter with more than 75,000 workers and 55 percent above 77,000 workers.
Polymarket more broadly Technology layoffs market It settled at 79 percent, anticipating increases throughout the month. Kalshi, a competing platform, has a similar market with bets exceeding $30 million.
Traders are treating job cuts as positive news. A Separate poll It also gives 79 percent odds that Meta shares will clear $700 in April. Meta stock rose nearly 3 percent when news of the layoffs first leaked. Bank of America set a price target of $885, expecting to save $7 billion to $8 billion annually from the restructuring.
OpenAI is moving in the opposite direction with its hiring push
While traditional technology companies are cutting their shares, OpenAI is moving in the opposite direction. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that the company plans to grow from 4,500 workers to 8,000 by the end of 2026. Most of the new employees will go to product development, engineering, research and sales. The company’s latest financing round estimated its value at $840 billion. As reported Cryptopolitan Previously, OpenAI had its own recruiting platform set to be released in mid-2026.
While rival CEO Dario Amodei has spent months warning that engineering jobs, especially programming roles, may disappear faster than expected. “I think programming will disappear first, or programming will be done by AI models first,” he said recently. He predicted that artificial intelligence will be able to write 90% of the code in many companies soon, and said: “Within 12 months, artificial intelligence will basically write all the code.”
Amodei pointed to the changes already occurring within Anthropic. Some engineering leaders no longer write code themselves, but only review what the AI produces. “There are entire jobs, entire careers that we have built over decades that may not exist,” he warned.
However, Anthropic’s careers page shows about 436 job openings at the moment. The largest employment area is sales with 150 open positions, followed by AI research and engineering with 68 positions, including Full-Stack Software Engineer and Performance Engineer roles. Many jobs offer pay between $320,000 and $405,000.
Duke and the Federal Reserve Banks reconnaissance Among more than 750 CFOs, more than 80% found zero productivity gains from AI, even as the same survey forecasts nearly 502,000 AI-related jobs in 2026, nine times the number in 2025.
Meta reports first-quarter earnings on April 29. Then comes the wave of layoffs on May 20. How both events play out will show whether the story of AI efficiency holds up or falls apart.
