Meta Announces 5% Job Cuts in Anticipation of a "Intense Year"

• CNBC confirmed Tuesday that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is cutting about 5% of its workforce, focusing on its lowest-performing employees.
• On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a memo on the company's internal Workplace forum that "low performers will be moved out faster."
• Zuckerberg told employees 2025 will "be an intense year."

CNBC confirmed Tuesday that the company is planning to reduce its workforce by approximately 5%, focusing on its lowest-performing employees.

In a memo posted on the company's internal Workplace forum on Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg informed employees that the decision had been made to "move out low performers faster" and that 2025 would be an "intense year."

The company announced that it is "exiting approximately 5% of our lowest performers" in a separate message posted by a company director. The company has more than 72,000 employees, according to its most recent quarterly report.

Meta will notify employees affected by the cuts by Feb. 10 and provide severance in accordance with previous provisions. These cuts are Meta's largest since the company laid off 21,000 jobs, or 25% of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023.

Bloomberg was first to report the cuts, citing an internal memo.

Meta is implementing significant operational changes to strengthen its relationship with President-elect Donald Trump.

Zuckerberg announced that Meta will replace its third-party fact-checking program with a "Community Notes" model, similar to Elon Musk's platform X, where users provide more context to posts.

In a video announcement, Zuckerberg stated that the recent elections have led to a cultural shift towards prioritizing speech, so the company will refocus on reducing errors, simplifying policies, and restoring free expression on their platforms.

Below is Zuckeberg's internal memo, which CNBC obtained.

To ensure a successful year, I want to ensure that our teams are composed of the best individuals. We are currently working on developing some of the world's most significant technologies, including AI, glasses as the next computing platform, and the future of social media.

We are raising the bar on performance management and accelerating the removal of low performers. In the past, we typically managed out underperforming employees over the course of a year, but now we plan to conduct more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle, with the goal of filling these roles in 2025. We will not manage out everyone who did not meet expectations for the last period if we are optimistic about their future performance, and for those we do let go, we will offer generous severance packages in line with what we provided with previous cuts.

We'll notify people who are impacted on February 10 or later, including those outside the U.S., and provide more guidance for managers ahead of calibrations.

WATCH: Critics pan Zuckerberg's move towards MAGA