New York, Jan 15, 2026, 09:34 EST — Regular session
Shares of Meta Platforms dropped 2.4% to $615.52 in early trading Thursday in New York, following a Wall Street Journal report that the Facebook parent cut about 1,500 jobs — roughly 10% — in its Reality Labs unit. Meta told the Journal the layoffs reflect a strategic shift, moving investment away from metaverse projects and focusing more on wearables and artificial intelligence. 1
The cutback comes at a sensitive time for the stock. Investors are grappling with Meta’s AI ambitions and the costs they bring—from staffing to the massive server farms powering the models.
Reality Labs is the division driving Meta’s virtual and augmented reality hardware, as well as its push into the metaverse — virtual environments designed to hold users within Meta’s ecosystem for extended periods.
Two other headlines from the past day highlighted the infrastructure driving the AI race, along with the hidden costs involved.
Earthjustice on Wednesday called on the Louisiana Public Service Commission to probe the financing behind Meta’s $27 billion data center project in Richland Parish, Louisiana. The massive facility, exceeding 2 gigawatts, had regulatory greenlights last year for new gas-fired generation and transmission. Earthjustice highlighted a revised agreement with joint-venture partner Blue Owl Capital that reportedly makes Meta a lessee with an option to exit after four years. According to an Earthjustice lawyer, Meta could potentially walk away having paid “almost none of the costs.” 2
Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, announced deals with Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon to license its content for training generative AI—tools that create text and images. The foundation said scraping its 65 million articles in over 300 languages has driven up server costs, pushing it to offer a paid enterprise service. It’s had a similar agreement with Google since 2022. “Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies’ work that they need to figure out how to support financially,” Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, told Reuters. 3
Meta faces a dilemma: these two trends pull in different directions but converge on one key issue. Spending more on cleaner data and energy could ease some operational challenges down the line, yet it squeezes margins now—right when investors are losing patience with unchecked AI costs.
Meta announced Wednesday it will report fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results after the market closes on Jan. 28, with a conference call set for 4:30 p.m. ET. Investors will likely focus on spending — what’s shifting, what’s steady, and whether management can prevent the AI investment from overwhelming cash flow. 4
Risks loom on both fronts. Regulators might clamp down on the influence and funding fueling major data center developments. Meanwhile, training data costs could climb as more content owners demand payment—though these deals could boost model reliability.
Meta’s next big date is Jan. 28, when it will update investors on costs, capital spending, and its 2026 outlook.
