Meta Plans Sweeping Layoffs As AI Spending Becomes Expensive; Dubai Airport Shut Due To Drone Strikes; and Trumps $10bn TikTok Fee
- Dipo Owolabi
- Mar 16
- 6 min read
The global tech race, geopolitical tensions, and political deal-making are colliding across markets. Meta Platforms is reportedly preparing sweeping layoffs that could affect up to 20% of its workforce as the company pours as much as $600 billion into AI infrastructure and a new “superintelligence” push. Meanwhile, flights were briefly halted at Dubai International Airport after a drone strike sparked a fire near the travel hub amid the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel. In the U.S., Amazon is preparing a massive $37–$42 billion bond sale to fund its own AI expansion, while the administration of Donald Trump is set to receive roughly $10 billion tied to the deal that allowed TikTok to continue operating in the United States. All this and more in today’s Read It and Eat! |
Markets Around The World
Markets as of 13th March 2026. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.
MAJOR HEADLINES
Meta Planning Sweeping Layoffs As AI Costs Mount
Meta is planning sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of its workforce, according to sources familiar with the matter, as the company seeks to offset rising artificial-intelligence infrastructure costs and prepare for efficiency gains from AI-assisted workers. No date has been set and the scale of the cuts has not been finalized, the sources said, though senior executives have already begun signaling the plans internally and asking leaders to prepare for staff reductions. If implemented, the cuts would mark Meta’s largest since its 2022–2023 restructuring, when the company eliminated more than 21,000 roles during what CEO Mark Zuckerberg dubbed the “year of efficiency.” Meta employed nearly 79,000 people as of December 31. A company spokesperson dismissed the report as “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.”
The potential layoffs come as Meta dramatically ramps up its push into generative AI. Zuckerberg has been recruiting aggressively for a new superintelligence team, offering compensation packages worth hundreds of millions of dollars over four years to attract top researchers. The company has also committed massive capital to AI infrastructure, saying it plans to spend $600 billion building data centers by 2028, while expanding its ecosystem through acquisitions, including social networking platform Moltbook, designed for AI agents and a reported $2 billion purchase of Chinese AI startup Manus.
At the same time, Meta is quietly rolling back another feature tied to its broader platform strategy. The company confirmed it will end support for end-to-end encryption in Instagram direct messages after May 8, 2026, citing low adoption of the opt-in feature. Unlike WhatsApp, where encryption is the default, Instagram only allowed users in certain regions to enable encrypted messaging on a per-chat basis. A Meta spokesperson said “very few people were opting in,” adding that users who want encrypted messaging can instead use WhatsApp. The company did not clarify whether the change will affect encryption on Facebook Messenger, where Meta began enabling end-to-end encryption by default in 2023. Reuters
Dubai Airport Flights Suspended Again After Drone Attack And Fire
Authorities in Dubai tackled a fire near Dubai International Airport on Monday following a drone attack that temporarily forced the suspension of flights at one of the world’s busiest international travel hubs. The strike marks the third such incident at the airport since Iran began launching attacks across Gulf states on February 28 amid the escalating U.S.–Israel war against Tehran. No injuries were reported and flights began resuming shortly after 6 a.m., though authorities said traffic was temporarily halted on road and tunnel links to the airport while the situation was contained.
Authorities in Dubai tackled a fire near Dubai International Airport on Monday following a drone attack that temporarily forced the suspension of flights at one of the world’s busiest international travel hubs. The strike marks the third such incident at the airport since Iran began launching attacks across Gulf states on February 28 amid the escalating U.S.–Israel war against Tehran. No injuries were reported and flights began resuming shortly after 6 a.m., though authorities said traffic was temporarily halted on road and tunnel links to the airport while the situation was contained.
Authorities in Dubai tackled a fire near Dubai International Airport on Monday following a drone attack that temporarily forced the suspension of flights at one of the world’s busiest international travel hubs. The strike marks the third such incident at the airport since Iran began launching attacks across Gulf states on February 28 amid the escalating U.S.–Israel war against Tehran. No injuries were reported and flights began resuming shortly after 6 a.m., though authorities said traffic was temporarily halted on road and tunnel links to the airport while the situation was contained. IndependentUK
Amazon.com, Inc. is advancing in the AI infrastructure race, as the company is looking to raise a $37-$42 billion in financing through a fresh bond issue. The company will use the proceeds to fund its AI infrastructure projects.
The company broadens the scope of its long-term technology plans with this issuance, which includes bonds valued in both dollars and euros. Furthermore, the issuance comes at a time when massive investments in cloud capacity and AI systems are being made by hyperscale IT firms. At the same time, Amazon.com, Inc. marketplace ecosystem continues to influence the development of AI-driven commerce.
According to Bloomberg, amid an ongoing legal dispute, a court this week temporarily ordered Perplexity AI to cease using its Comet browser agent to make transactions on Amazon’s platform. Amazon filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that the AI shopping tool had been improperly used to access its marketplace. Amazon.com, Inc. is a global technology company that offers cloud services and online retail to consumers, businesses, and institutions through its North America, International, and Amazon Web Services segments. Yahoo.Finance |
Trump Administration Set To Receive $10 billion ‘Fee’ For Brokering TikTok Deal
The Trump administration is poised to receive a roughly $10 billion "brokerage" fee from the investor group that recently took control of TikTok’s U.S. operations, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. The payment, which President Trump has previously referred to as a "fee-plus," represents a windfall for the Treasury Department in exchange for facilitating the deal that allowed the social media app to continue operating in the United States. Shares of Oracle Corporation, a key member of the investor consortium, were down 2.5% following the development.
The multibillion-dollar payout is being financed by a group of administration-aligned investors, including Oracle, private-equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. Sources familiar with the matter indicate that the Treasury received an initial $2.5 billion payment upon the deal’s closing in January, with the remainder to be paid in installments until the $10 billion threshold is met. The fee is separate from the capital invested to establish the new U.S. entity, which Vice President JD Vance recently valued at approximately $14 billion, a figure some tech analysts argue significantly undervalues the platform’s reach.
The extraction of this fee marks a significant departure from traditional U.S. regulatory involvement in private-sector transactions. Typically, advisory fees for even the largest mergers, such as Union Pacific Corporation $71.5 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern Corporation , result in bank payouts that are a fraction of the percentage claimed by the government in the TikTok deal. Administration officials have defended the payment as compensation for navigating complex security negotiations with China and ensuring the app’s compliance with divestiture laws while maintaining its proprietary algorithm under a licensing agreement with ByteDance. The transaction is the latest in a series of unconventional interventions by the administration, which recently secured a 10% stake in Intel Corporation and established profit-sharing agreements on NVIDIA Corporation chip sales to China. Yahoo.Finance
Minor Headlines
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Judge throws out subpoenas in Justice Department’s Fed Investigation Reuters
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