According to a Reuters report based on three sources familiar with the matter, the company has yet to fix a date for the layoffs, and the extent of the job cuts has not yet been finalized.

Two of the people said that Meta’s (META) top executives have recently communicated the plans during discussions with other senior leaders and told them to start planning how to proceed with the layoffs.

Responding to questions about the plans, Andy Stone, a company spokesperson, told Reuters, “This is speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.” Meta (META) employed approximately 79,000 workers as of Dec. 31, according to its latest 10-K filing.

If finalized, the 20% number will represent Meta’s (META) biggest round of job cuts since a restructuring program that eliminated more than 20,000 jobs at the company in late 2022 and early 2023 following a hiring spree that had doubled its employee count from 2020.

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Monday – March 16

• Volatility watch – Flutter Entertainment (FLUT) and AXT (AXTI) are set up for a volatile week of trading based on options volume. The most overbought stocks per their 14-day relative strength index include Itafos (ITFS), Alto Ingredients (ALTO), and Cabral Gold (CBGZF). The most oversold stocks per their 14-day Relative Strength Index include Cion Investment (CION), Sotera (SHC), and eXp World Holdings (EXPI). Short interest is elevated on Better Home & Finance (BETR) and Lucid Group (LCID) following its Investor Day event.
• Earnings watch – Notable companies due to report include Dollar Tree (DLTR).
• Dividend watch – Companies that have an ex-dividend date coming next week include AIG (AIG), Meta Platforms (META), Merck (MRK), and Kohl’s (KSS).
• IPO watch – No new IPOs are expected to begin trading. The IPO lockup expires on certain blocks of shares of Netskope (NTSK) and Pattern Group (PTRN). The quiet period expires on Sharon AI (SHAZ) to free up analysts to post ratings.
• Nvidia watch – The tech sector will be focused on the four-day NVIDIA GTC event in San Jose. The company’s messaging highlights OpenAI (OPENAI), Google DeepMind, Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), and Tesla (TSLA) as participating in main stage or marquee sessions. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang will give a keynote address at 2:00 p.m. on Monday. Stocks that could react to GTC developments include AMD (AMD), Taiwan Semi (TSM), Broadcom (AVGO), and Intel (INTC).
• All day – News Corporation (NWSA) has a Dow Jones investor briefing scheduled.
• All day – The four-day Oppenheimer Healthcare MedTech & Services Conference will begin. Notable companies participating include (EDAP), (AORT), (TNDM), and (NMTC).
• All day – The European Foreign Affairs Council will meet in Brussels to discuss the Middle East and Ukraine wars.
• All day – The three-day J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference will begin. Delta Air Lines (DAL), Archer Aviation (ACHR), and Alcoa (AA) are some of the notable companies participating.
• All day – Aldeyra Therapeutics (ALDX) has an FDA PDUFA decision on its reproxalap New Drug Application for treating dry eye disease.
• All day – Shareholders with Two Harbors Investment (TWO) will vote on the buyout deal from UWM Holdings (UWMC).
• 11:00 a.m. Okta (OKTA) will hold an event to unveil its latest AI security and identity security innovations.

Tuesday – March 17

• Earnings watch – Notable companies due to report include Tencent Music (TME), Lululemon (LULU), Oklo (OKLO), and Docusign (DOCU).
• All day – BrightSpring Health Services (BTSG) will hold an Investor Day event.
• All day – The first games of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament will be played. The addition of Missouri to the sports betting pool and increased interest in the tournament are expected to boost DraftKings (DKNG) and BetMGM (MGM) (GMVHF). Meanwhile, prediction market players Kalshi (KALSHI) and Polymarket (POLYMARKET) have greatly expanded their event contracts around March Madness.

Wednesday – March 18

• Earnings watch – Notable companies due to report include Micron Technology (MU), Jabil (JBL), Williams-Sonoma (WSM), Five Below (FIVE), General Mills (GIS), and SailPoint (SAIL). Options trading implies a double-digit swing in share price for Macy’s (M) and Spire Global (SPIR) after they report.
• All day – Notable investor events include nVent Electric’s (NVT) Investor Day.
• All day – The National Retail Federation will hold an event called the State of Retail & the Consumer, during which it will issue its annual sales forecast. BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ) CEO Bob Eddy will participate in one of the sessions.
• All day – The Bank of America Global Automotive Summit will begin. General Motors (GM), Lear (LEA), and Dauch (DCH) are some of the notable companies due to participate.
• 8:30 a.m. The February Producer Price Index report will be released.
• 2:00 p.m. The Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision.
• 2:30 p.m. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will hold a press conference.

Thursday – March 19

• Earnings watch – Notable companies due to report include Alibaba (BABA), Planet Labs (PL), Darden Restaurants (DRI), and FedEx (FDX). Options trading implies a double-digit swing for Gemini Space Station (GEMI) after they report.
• All day – Notable investor events include Viatris’ (VTRS) investor meeting, Hillman Solutions’ (HLMN) Investor Day, LandBridge Company’s (LB) Investor Day, and Box’s (BOX) Financial Analyst Day
• 8:15 a.m. The European Central Bank will release its monetary policy statement. ECB officials will also hold a press conference.
• 8:30 a.m. The Philadelphia Fed Index report will be released. Economists expect the index to stay in contractionary territory.

Friday – March 20

• Earnings watch – Notable companies due to report include XPeng (XPEV).
• All day – The stock market could see extra volatility with triple witching day featuring the simultaneous expiration of stock options, stock index futures, and stock index options contracts.
• All day – It is the last trading day before the Climb Global Solutions (CLMB) four-for-one stock split.
• All day – Rhythm Pharmaceuticals (RYTM) has an FDA PDUFA goal date for a supplemental NDA for setmelanotide in acquired hypothalamic obesity.
• All day – WTI crude oil April futures expire amid a very volatile period for the oil market.
• Postmarket – The additions to the S&P 500 Index of Vertiv Holdings (VRT), Lumentum Holdings (LITE), Coherent (COHR), and EchoStar (SATS) to replace Match Group (MTCH), Molina Healthcare (MOH), Lamb Weston (LW), and Paycom Software (PAYC) will become effective. The additions to the S&P 100 Index of Micron (MU), Lam Research (LRCX), Applied Materials (AMAT), and GE Vernova (GEV) to replace Target (TGT), MetLife (MET), PayPal (PYPL), and American International Group (AIG) will also become effective.

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Financial terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed, but a

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This is in addition to Meta Platforms (META), which was implicated in a report last week as also wanting to lease some of the planned expansion after Oracle (ORCL) and OpenAI (OPENAI) decided not to expand from 1.2 GW to 2 GW.

The site in question is one of the flagship centers of the Stargate Project. Construction continues on the 1,000-acre development, and both Oracle and OpenAI are continuing to utilize the Stargate site. The data center is being developed by Crusoe, which develops data centers utilizing renewable energy and stranded natural gas.

Microsoft is now engaged in advanced talks to lease hundreds of megawatts of data center capacity from the site, the report said. Oracle currently leases out eight buildings at the site for use by OpenAI. Microsoft could use the planned extra capacity to expand its Azure cloud business or rent out cloud servers to OpenAI. Completion of the site will likely require tens of billions of dollars, including the Nvidia (NVDA) GPUs needed to provide the AI computing power.

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The data shows a clear pattern: AI and technology-related names dominate the list, reflecting how investor enthusiasm around artificial intelligence has driven steady inflows into the sector.

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) leads by a wide margin, with ownership rising from just 7% of funds a year ago to 32% today, a jump of 26 percentage points, the largest increase in the entire index.

Other AI-linked or semiconductor-adjacent firms such as Broadcom (AVGO), Arista Networks (ANET), and Amphenol (APH) also saw strong gains in fund participation, underscoring the broad-based institutional pivot into AI infrastructure and data-enabling technologies.

Beyond the core tech names, the inclusion of GE Vernova (GEV) and Gilead Sciences (GILD) shows that investors are diversifying exposure across sectors while still prioritizing growth resilience. Large-cap communication services firms like Meta Platforms (META) and Netflix (NFLX) also attracted new fund ownership

Below is a list of stocks with the largest increase in ownership breadth according to Bank of America global research, ranked by their Seeking Alpha Quant Ratings.

Arista Networks (ANET) and AppLovin (APP) top the list, earning “Strong Buy” ratings from the Quant system with scores of 4.78 and 4.52, respectively. These two names stand out as the only stocks on the list to achieve bullish assessments above the 3.5 threshold.

The remainder of the top five includes Western Digital (WDC), Broadcom (AVGO), and GE Vernova (GEV), all carrying “Hold” ratings. Notably, Western Digital has delivered the strongest year-to-date performance of the group at 54.54%, while GE Vernova has gained 28.40% YTD despite its more neutral Quant assessment.

Here is the list:

1. Arista Networks (ANET), Quant Rating: 4.78

2. AppLovin (APP), Quant Rating: 4.52

3. Western Digital (WDC), Quant Rating: 3.49

4. Broadcom (AVGO), Quant Rating: 3.48

5. GE Vernova (GEV), Quant Rating: 3.44

6. Palantir Technologies (PLTR), Quant Rating: 3.44

7. Meta Platforms (META), Quant Rating: 3.37

8. Amphenol (APH), Quant Rating: 3.34

9. Gilead Sciences (GILD), Quant Rating: 3.26

10. Netflix (NFLX), Quant Rating: 3.18

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Meta said that while it remains committed to a diverse silicon portfolio and to using the best solutions available — both internally and externally — the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator, or MTIA, its family of homegrown AI chips developed in partnership with Broadcom (AVGO), has remained and will continue to be an important part of Meta’s AI infrastructure strategy.

On Wednesday, Meta announced plans for the four new chips — MTIA 300, MTIA 400, MTIA 450 and MTIA 500 — as a part of its efforts to diversify its chip portfolio, reduce reliance on outside chips, and bring down costs.

Meta had recently announced deals to spend billions on AI infrastructure from Nvidia (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Google.

The company said the new chips have either already been deployed or are scheduled for deployment in 2026 or 2027, expanding workload coverage from ranking and recommendation, or R&R, inference to R&R training, general GenAI workloads, and GenAI inference with targeted optimizations.

AI inference is the process of running a trained AI model to make predictions on new, unseen data.

Meta said MTIA 300 is already in production for R&R training. Meta has finished testing MTIA 400 in its labs, and the company is on track to deploy it in its data centers.

The company noted that MTIA 450 and MTIA 500 are scheduled for mass deployment in early 2027.

Meta said that anticipating the rise in GenAI inference demand, MTIA 400 transitioned into MTIA 450, with specific optimizations for GenAI inference. The company added that since the bandwidth of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, is the most important factor affecting GenAI inference performance, it doubled HBM bandwidth from MTIA 400 to 450. Meanwhile, MTIA 500 increased HBM bandwidth by an additional 50% compared to MTIA 450.

“Given the rapid pace of AI innovation, we have built the capability to ship a new chip roughly every six months,” said a Meta blog post written by Yee Jiun Song, Andrew Tulloch, Harikrishna Reddy, CQ Tang, and Vijay Thakkar.

Last month, The Information reported that Meta was facing issues with AI chips being developed internally and has discarded its most advanced chip, shifting focus to a less complicated version.

Meta said on Wednesday that chip designs are based on projected workloads, but by the time the hardware reaches production — often two years later — those workloads may have shifted substantially. Rather than placing a bet and waiting for a long period of time, the company has taken an iterative approach: each MTIA generation builds on the last, using modular chiplets, incorporating the latest AI workload insights and hardware technologies, and deploying on a shorter cadence.

The tech giant noted that this tighter loop keeps its hardware better aligned with evolving models while enabling faster adoption of new technology.

Shares of Meta were largely flat on Wednesday.

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In an email that was viewed by Bloomberg, Meta informed advertisers of the new fees, which will apply to digital ads delivered in particular countries, even if the advertiser isn’t based there.

Businesses buying ads on the company’s platforms will be charged an additional amount, corresponding to the digital tax rate in the country where they are showing the ad, the report said. Both image-based and video ads will be affected. Meta claims it absorbed the location fees all this while.

The policy is set to apply to Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the UK. France, Italy, and Spain’s digital service tax rate is 3%, while Austria and Turkey charge 5% and the UK 2%, the report said.

“If you deliver $100 in ads to Italy, where there is a 3% location fee, you will be charged $100 (ad delivery), plus $3 (location fee), for $103 total,” the company reportedly said in the email. “Note that any applicable VAT will be calculated on top of the total amount.”

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The company said it is building a new breed of AI systems that understand the world, have persistent memory, can reason and plan, and are controllable and safe.

AMI reached a $3.50B pre-money valuation, according to a report from Reuters.

AMI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha about the valuation.

The startup, which is less than three months old, said the funding round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital, and Bezos Expeditions, among other investors.

AMI noted that it is also supported by global investors and strategic backers, including Nvidia (NVDA), Toyota Ventures, and Samsung (SSNLF), among others.

In addition, AMI is appointing Alex LeBrun as CEO. LeBrun made an announcement on his LinkedIn post. LeBrun said he has spent 24 years building AI products — including work on chatbots (VirtuOz, 2002), natural language understanding (Wit.ai, 2012), Facebook’s M assistant (2015), and healthcare AI (Nabla, 2019).

AMI has headquarters in Paris and also operates from New York, Montreal, and Singapore.

LeCun, who is co-founder and executive chairman at AMI, had been at Meta’s Facebook for over 12 years and left in January, according to his LinkedIn profile. In December 2025, it was reported that LeCun was looking to raise €500M for the startup. LeCun had said Meta would not invest in his company.

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Instead, Meta Platforms (META) is now considering stepping in to lease the planned expansion, which is owned and being developed by Crusoe, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Nvidia (NVDA) also played a role in steering Meta to take advantage of the expansion.

Apparently, Oracle and OpenAI’s expansion plans were hampered by financing issues and changes to forecasted demand, the report said.

The Abilene data center is part of the Stargate Project, and construction continues on the 1,000-acre development. Both Oracle and OpenAI are continuing to utilize the Stargate site.

“We are very proud of our relationship and our progress in bringing capacity online,” Oracle said in a statement, according to the report.

“Together, Crusoe and Oracle are operating in lockstep to deliver one of the world’s largest AI factories in Abilene,” Crusoe added. “Our collaboration can deliver massive-scale infrastructure faster than anyone else in the industry.”

Meanwhile, Meta continues to push full-steam ahead with its lofty data center goals. Last month, the social media giant entered into a multi-year, multi-generation agreement with AMD (AMD) to deploy up to 6 GW of AMD Instinct chips to power Meta’s next generation of AI infrastructure.

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