At a July 2, 2026 internal town hall, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that the company’s AI agent development “hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” according to Reuters reporting on an internal recording. The admission came about six weeks after Meta laid off roughly 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, while shielding AI infrastructure teams from the cuts and reassigning thousands of workers to new AI-focused teams. Meta’s stock has fallen roughly 11.5% year-to-date even as the company plans $125-145 billion in 2026 capital spending on AI infrastructure.
