Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently addressed the company’s widely discussed “4 AM layoff email” during an earnings call, as the company reported a surge in expenses driven by severance costs and legal charges.
In May 2026, Meta fired roughly 8,000 employees. Thousands of workers across the globe received an email from Meta leadership informing them that their roles had been eliminated. The email, obtained by Business Insider, detailed severance, visas, and access to company systems. It said employee access had been cut, but laid-off employees could check details on an alumni portal within an hour of losing system access.
Zuckerberg noted that Q2 expenses included $1.2 billion in severance costs tied to the May 2026 headcount reduction. An additional $2.4 billion in legal charges also weighed on results.
The Financial Picture
Meta reported Q2 revenue of $60.8 billion, up 28% year-over-year. However, total expenses surged 55% to $42 billion, driven by higher employee compensation, infrastructure costs, legal-related charges, and third-party AI token expenses.
Meta’s GAAP operating income for the quarter was $18.8 billion, representing an 8% decline year-over-year. Excluding severance and legal charges, operating income would have increased 9% compared to last year.
“We ended Q2 with over 75,000 employees, down 3% from Q1. This total includes approximately 8,000 employees impacted by the May 2026 headcount reduction,” Zuckerberg said. “We expect the majority of impacted employees will no longer be captured in our headcount by the end of Q3 2026.”
The AI Paradox
In a separate interview with the Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg said that “all the work around AI has net created a lot of jobs because there’s all this infrastructure that needs to get created.” He added that fears of mass displacement haven’t “played out the way that people feared it might.”
However, Meta laid off 8,000 employees — about 10% of its workforce — in May as part of an AI-first restructuring, reassigned another 7,000 to AI initiatives, and is on track to spend between $130 billion and $145 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, roughly double last year’s outlay.
The Bottom Line
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the company’s “4 AM layoff email” during the earnings call, as Q2 expenses surged 55% to $42 billion. The company reported $1.2 billion in severance costs from the May layoffs of 8,000 employees and $2.4 billion in legal charges. Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Zuckerberg argues AI is creating jobs, even as his company eliminated thousands of positions.
