Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta posted record Q1 2026 revenue of $56.3 billion—then announced 8,000 layoffs and stock options worth up to $921 million for six senior executives.
Meta just posted the strongest quarter in its history. Revenue hit $56.3 billion, up 33% year-over-year. Net income landed at $26.8 billion. The stock dropped 7% anyway. About 8,000 employees learned their jobs end May 20. And six senior executives quietly received stock options that could be worth $921 million each.
The numbers are almost satirically stark.
The $9 Trillion Bet
Six executives hold options currently worth zero—and that only changes if Meta becomes the most valuable company ever built.
If you’re one of Meta’s six chosen executives—CTO Andrew Bosworth, CPO Chris Cox, COO Javier Olivan, CFO Susan Li, the chief legal officer, and one other senior leader—you just received 653,865 stock options with exercise prices climbing from roughly $1,116 to $3,727 per share, expiring March 2031. Right now, they’re worth exactly zero. They only pay out if Meta’s market cap balloons from approximately $1.5 trillion to $9–9.5 trillion, which would make it the most valuable company ever built—surpassing even Nvidia’s current $5 trillion peak. Harvard Law School’s corporate governance forum called it a “moonshot award” echoing Tesla’s controversial pay model. Zuckerberg himself isn’t part of the plan. He already controls the company through super-voting shares.
Buried in the same earnings cycle, Chief People Officer Janelle Gale informed roughly 10% of Meta’s 77,986-person workforce they’d be out by May 20. Another 6,000 open roles vanished. About 7,000 remaining employees were shuffled into AI-focused teams. Gale’s framing: the cuts allow Meta “to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” Those investments? Chips and concrete. “Projects that once required large teams can now be achieved by a single, very talented person.” — Mark Zuckerberg.
Who Pays for the AI Bet
Record earnings masked a more complicated picture—and investors noticed.
The earnings headline looked like a victory lap, but peel back one layer and the picture shifts. Meta raised its 2026 capital-expenditure guidance to $125–145 billion—roughly double last year—almost entirely for AI infrastructure. That $26.8 billion net income included an $8.03 billion one-time tax benefit tied to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Strip it out and underlying EPS was about $7.31—still beating analyst estimates of roughly $6.67, but far from the blockbuster headline figure. Meanwhile, daily active people across Meta’s apps fell quarter-over-quarter for the first time since the company started reporting that combined metric.
Amazon, Salesforce, and Snap have each followed the same 2026 playbook:
- Cut headcount
- Freeze open roles
- Pour billions into AI infrastructure
- Call it efficiency
Labor and compute are increasingly treated as interchangeable line items on a balance sheet—a trade-off that is still unproven as a long-term productivity strategy. For more on how Big Tech accountability has played out, see our coverage of tech scandals that have shaped the industry.
The executive options are currently worthless paper. The 8,000 layoffs are not. That gap tells you everything about who absorbs the risk in the AI economy—and who stands to collect the reward.
