Meta cuts stock awards by 5% for most employees, FT reports

Meta reduced its annual distribution of stock ​options by about ​5% for most of its staff, as CEO ​Mark Zuckerberg ploughs billions of dollars into its artificial intelligence goals, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The Facebook parent declined to comment.

Meta ‌and other ⁠Big ⁠Tech companies are competing to outbuild each other with massive data ​centers to get ahead in Silicon Valley's heated AI race. The social ​media company said in January that it expected capital expenditure for 2026 to be between $115 billion and $135 billion.


Meta has ​slashed equity-based awards for the ⁠bulk of ‌its employees for the second year in ​a row, ​the report said, citing people familiar with ⁠the matter.

Last year, the company had cut ​the stock award by roughly 10%, which shocked ​some staff at the time, the FT report said.

Meta last month laid off about 10% of employees within its Reality Labs group, which had about 15,000 workers, as the company redirects resources from some ‌of its virtual reality products to wearables.

The unit - which has accumulated more than $70 billion in losses ​since 2021 - ​includes Meta's ⁠ambitious "metaverse" bet. Meta is building several gigawatt-scale data centers across the United States, including one in rural Louisiana, a project President Donald ​Trump said would cost $50 billion. Last month, Meta appointed Trump ally Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman in a bid to drive partnerships with governments and investors for its AI projects.