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Meta’s artificial intelligence overhaul is now hitting one of the country’s largest tech corridors, with the Facebook parent company preparing to cut nearly 1,400 workers across Washington state.
New filings submitted to Washington state officials show Meta will begin terminating employees in Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond and remote positions starting July 22 as the company restructures operations around AI initiatives.
The filings provide one of the clearest looks yet at how Meta’s broader workforce overhaul is affecting employees on the ground after the company announced plans last week to eliminate roughly 10% of its workforce while shifting thousands of workers into AI-focused roles.
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Bellevue will take the largest hit, with 699 workers affected, according to the WARN notice filed Friday with the Washington State Employment Security Department. The cuts also include 259 employees across two Seattle offices, 206 workers in Redmond and another 231 remote employees statewide.
The layoffs affect a broad range of positions, including software engineers, data scientists, content designers and IT staff, underscoring how deeply Meta’s restructuring effort is reaching into its technical workforce.
“The changes we are implementing vary by team and include layoffs, open role closures, and moving thousands of employees to business critical priorities across the company,” a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement shared with FOX Business.
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Meta has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s biggest spenders in the AI race, committing billions toward data centers, advanced chips and internal AI tools as competition intensifies with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has increasingly positioned artificial intelligence as central to the company’s future business strategy, while Meta simultaneously reduces headcount and reshapes internal teams around automation and AI-focused development.
The company employed nearly 78,000 workers globally at the end of March, according to securities filings.
Workers affected by the Washington layoffs were notified May 20 and will continue receiving pay and benefits through their termination dates, according to the filing signed by Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale.
Fox Business’ Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
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