Meta plans to lay off more than 100 employees in Washington state as part of a broader round of cuts within its artificial intelligence division.
A new filing with the state’s Employment Security Department shows 101 employees impacted, including 48 in Bellevue, 23 in Seattle, and four in Redmond, along with 23 remote workers based in Washington.
The filing lists dozens of affected roles across Meta’s AI research and infrastructure units, including software engineers, AI researchers, and data scientists. Meta product managers, privacy specialists, and compliance analysts were also affected.
Meta is cutting around 600 positions in its AI unit, Axios reported last week. The company is investing heavily in AI and wants to create a “more agile operation,” according to an internal memo cited by Axios. Meta has just under 3,000 roles within its superintelligence lab, CNBC reported.
The separations at Meta in Washington take effect Dec. 22, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice filed Oct. 22.
Meta employs thousands of people across multiple offices in the Seattle region, one of its largest engineering hubs outside Menlo Park.
The latest reductions mark another contraction for Meta’s Pacific Northwest footprint following multiple rounds of layoffs over the past several years.
The company’s rapid expansion in Seattle over the past decade made it one of the emblems of the region’s tech boom, coinciding with Microsoft’s resurgence and Amazon’s rise.
Among the Bay Area titans, Google was among the first to establish a Seattle-area engineering office, way back in 2004. However, it was Facebook’s decision to open its own outpost across from Pike Place Market in 2010 that really got the attention of their Silicon Valley tech brethren.
In the decade that followed, out-of-town companies set up more than 130 engineering centers in the region.
However, more recently Meta has made moves to trim its Seattle-area footprint.
Apple earlier this year took over a building previously occupied by Meta in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, near Amazon’s headquarters. CoStar reported in April that Meta listed its other Arbor Blocks building for sublease.
Meta previously gobbled up much of the planned office space at the Spring District, a sprawling development northeast of downtown Bellevue, including a building that was originally going to be a new REI headquarters. But it has subleased some of the space since then to companies such as Snowflake, which recently subleased an entire building from Meta at the Spring District.
Meta’s office in Redmond, near Microsoft’s headquarters, is focused on its mixed reality unit.
GeekWire has reached out to the company for an updated Seattle-area headcount.
Meta’s cuts come amid reported layoffs at Amazon that could impact up to 30,000 workers.
Tech companies have laid off more than 128,000 employees this year, according to Layoffs.fyi. Last year, companies cut nearly 153,000 positions.
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