They Laid Off 142,000 People to Pay for $725 Billion in AI. No Law Required Them to Say So.

Meta posted $56B in revenue the same quarter it cut 8,000 jobs. Cloudflare grew 25% and cut 20% of staff. A breakdown of the transfer that no one was legally required to disclose. The desks did not disappear. The people who sat at them did. Made by the author On May 20, 2026, Meta began executing 8,000 layoffs. That same day, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order acknowledging the problem. On the same day, in Washington, President Trump pulled a planned federal AI executive order hours before it was supposed to be signed.