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Mark Zuckerberg freezes Meta's radical AI-driven restructuring plan after security failures and internal employee protests.

Mark Zuckerberg froze a secret restructuring plan for Meta, Project OT, after it triggered security failures and an internal revolt among staff. The initiative, which began in January 2026, aimed to replace traditional teams of 10 to 20 people with smaller pods of 3 to 5 generalist builders supervising fleets of AI agents. During the restructuring, Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees, representing about 10% of the workforce, and reassigned over 7,000 engineers to a division focused on generating raw training data. The company also planned to install tracking software on U.S.-based employees' computers to capture data for AI training. The plan faced challenges as AI-generated code volume increased by 220%, while actual features shipped to users grew by only 36%. Security flaws and major incidents rose by 40%, including a breach that hijacked the former official White House account from the Obama era. In response, Mark Zuckerberg conceded that AI technology had not progressed as fast as anticipated. Meta has since suspended the tracking program, reinstated the reassigned engineers, and restored workplace perks that were stripped during the restructuring.

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