The future of Meta’s sprawling Seattle-area real estate footprint is becoming increasingly wobbly as the social media giant rolls out plans to cut about 20% of its regional workforce in an aggressive push toward artificial intelligence.
The Silicon Valley tech company is deleting nearly 1,400 jobs in the area, according to information filed with the Washington state Employment Security Department. The layoffs will affect teams scattered across multiple offices the Facebook parent leases in the area, including hubs in Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond.
“The changes we are implementing vary by team and include layoffs, open role closures, and moving thousands of employees to business critical priorities across the company,” Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton told CoStar News.
The company declined to comment on how the job cuts could or would ultimately translate into changes to Meta’s portfolio of offices. Yet the Facebook parent has “been shedding office space since returning to the office post-pandemic,” Clayton said, indicating those cuts are likely to continue as the company sprints to compete in the global AI boom.
The layoffs are part of an ongoing push by Meta to run the company more efficiently and offset heavy investments in AI infrastructure. The Menlo Park, California-based company plans to spend as much as $145 billion on capital expenditures this year alone, a significant increase from its previous estimate of about $115 billion and a boost executives said was necessary given the “additional data center costs to support future-year capacity.”
By comparison, Meta spent about $72 billion on capital expenditures last year, a $30 billion increase from the prior year. Already Meta is looking at spending about double that 2025 budget, more than its spending in 2024 and the prior year combined.
“Every sign that we’re seeing in our own work and across the industry gives us confidence in this investment,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors earlier this year. “That said, we are very focused on increasing the efficiency of our investments.”
Layoffs put spotlight on office footprint
Part of that efficiency push involves cutting its corporate workforce.
The company’s Seattle layoffs will affect employees in offices at 1101 Dexter Ave. N and 1531 Utah Ave. S in Seattle; 1209 124th Ave. NE across the lake in Bellevue; 9845 Willows Road NE in Redmond; and about 230 people who had been working remotely but living in Washington state.
Those offices currently house Meta’s Facebook, Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp, advertising and infrastructure teams, and they total about 850,800 square feet of office space, according to CoStar.
The company hasn’t directly linked any office closures or lease terminations to its mounting layoffs, which most recently eliminated about 8,000 positions across the company.
Yet that efficiency push has led Meta to shed millions of square feet of real estate in recent years, much of which has been concentrated in hubs such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, London and elsewhere around the world. What’s more, several of its Seattle-area offices are running on lease terms scheduled to expire within the next couple of years, providing the company a clean exit if it opts against renewing deals for space that’s no longer needed.
Meta’s nearly 308,700-square-foot Dexter Avenue lease, for example, is set to expire next year.
The company’s push to lead the global AI boom has resulted in a widened effort to dump office space to curb costs and allocate the savings toward higher-priority investments.
That may not be a certain outcome though, especially given Meta’s recent decision to sign two renewal agreements for about 146,000 square feet it leases in two buildings in Redmond. The extensions are a standout in that respect, especially considering the company’s steep cuts to its corporate workforce.