Meta has slashed equity-based awards for the bulk of its employees for the second year in a row, as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg ploughs billions of dollars into hiring top AI researchers and building a fleet of data centres.
The group reduced its annual distribution of stock options by about 5 per cent for most of its staff, equating to tens of thousands of employees, according to people familiar with the matter. That follows a cut of roughly 10 per cent last year, which shocked some staff at the time.
Meta’s cut to a vital component of employee remuneration comes as Zuckerberg has embarked on a staggering AI spending spree in a bid to beat rivals such as OpenAI and Google to develop cutting-edge models and eventually “superintelligence”.