The charitable foundation of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan conducted its first layoff this week.
The cuts at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative impacted 48 employees, according to two people familiar with the company. In a Wednesday post to Blind, an app popular with tech workers, one verified CZI employee confirmed the layoffs, calling it a "bloodbath."
On Wednesday afternoon, Insider asked CZI spokeswoman Raymonde Charles whether the charity had laid off workers. She didn't respond initially. More than an hour later, the job cuts were reported by The 74 Million, a website that covers education and was co-founded by Campbell Brown, a vice president at Meta.
After that report came out, Charles sent the story to Insider in an email and wrote "I can confirm the details here."
"Guided by insights from our grantees, research, and educators, our work in education continues to evolve, and the structure of our teams has changed as a result," she added in a statement.
Chan, a doctor, leads CZI day-to-day as co-founder and co-CEO with Zuckerberg, whom she met while they were undergrads at Harvard University. They wed in 2012 and started CZI a few years later, at the end of 2015.
The founding goal of the foundation was as a vehicle for the couple to put nearly all of their massive wealth, generated through Meta, formerly known as Facebook, toward charitable causes. They wanted to eradicate all diseases, improve education and fix the criminal justice system. The initial tag line for CZI was "Advancing human potential and promoting equal opportunity."
That tagline is no more. Now, CZI's areas of focus are broadly science, education and community, things it's trying to improve through impact investing and grants. The organization said it has granted $4.9 billion through the end of 2022 and invested another $300 million in ventures that "align" with its values.
The bulk of the Wednesday layoffs hit CZI's education team, one of the people familiar with the cuts said, leaving the person to wonder what the future of CZI's educational work will be.
Zuckerberg is one of the richest people in the world, with a personal wealth of more than $100 billion. Over at Meta, employees there have dealt with layoffs since November, as the company looked to reduce costs in the face of slowing revenue growth and massive expenses on Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions.
Eventually, Zuckerberg declared 2023 to be Meta's "Year of Efficiency," touting the positive effects he's seen from encouraging employees to do more with less. It seems that mandate has made its way over to the CEO's charitable initiative as well.
Are you a CZI or Meta employee, or someone else with insight to share? Contact Kali Hays at khays@insider.com, on secure messaging appSignal at 949-280-0267, or through Twitter DM at @hayskali. Reach out using a non-work device.
