Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling individual technology workers to accomplish tasks that previously required entire teams.
During a conference call with financial analysts on Wednesday to discuss Meta’s 2025 financial performance, Zuckerberg projected that “2026 [will] be the year that AI dramatically changes the way we work.”
In recent years, Meta, like other major tech firms, has implemented multiple rounds of layoffs, each involving thousands of employees, with the aim of reducing management layers and optimizing operational efficiency.
Zuckerberg’s remarks suggest the possibility of further workforce reductions at the technology conglomerate.
“We’re starting to see projects that used to take big teams now be accomplished by a single, very talented person,” he said.
Earlier this year, Meta conducted layoffs impacting several hundred employees, primarily within its Reality Labs division, which is focused on the company’s “metaverse” initiatives, hardware development, and AI research.
Zuckerberg noted that Meta is increasing its investments in AI tools designed to enhance the productivity of employees, particularly software engineers.
He emphasized that as employees leverage these tools to become “significantly more productive,” a considerable performance gap is emerging “between the people who do it and do it well and the people who don’t.”
“I think it’s very hard for anyone exactly to predict what the shape of how organisations working is going to feel, but I just think the fact that agents are really starting to work now is quite profound,” he added.
The company is making substantial investments in AI projects and related infrastructure, allocating $77 billion (£55 billion) last year in its efforts to establish a leading position in the AI sector.
Meta announced on Wednesday that it anticipates doubling its AI-related expenditures this year.
Zuckerberg’s comments coincided with Meta’s release of financial results for the final quarter of 2025, which revealed that expenses grew at a faster rate than revenues, thereby compressing profit margins.
Meta shares experienced a surge of approximately 7.5% in after-hours trading in New York following the announcement.
Some industry observers have cautioned that such extensive investments could create an AI bubble, drawing parallels to the dotcom boom that culminated in 2000.
Chuck Robbins, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems, told the BBC that while AI’s potential could surpass that of the internet, the current market environment may be indicative of a bubble, with some companies unlikely to survive.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has expressed similar concerns, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai has acknowledged a degree of “irrationality” within the AI boom.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company credited with initiating the current AI surge in the tech industry, offered a more direct assessment: “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes,” he stated last year.
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