Meta Platforms Inc, the parent company of Facebook, is planning to go in for large-scale job cuts that will affect thousands of employees, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday citing people in the know of the matter.

Meta has declined to comment on the WSJ report.

Meta in its financial results announced last month forecast a weak quarter ahead and a sharp rise in costs next year which resulted in its market cap crashing by a whopping $67 billion.

The gloomy outlook comes as Meta amid slowing global economic growth, increased competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on Metaverse and regulation problems.

Other tech giants such as Twitter, Microsoft, and Snap have also cut jobs and reduced hiring in recent months as global economic growth has slowed toa crawl due to higher interest rates, rising inflation and an energy crisis in Europe.

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects the Metaverse investments to take about a decade to yield results. In the meantime, he has to freeze hiring, shut projects and reorganize teams to reduce costs.

“In 2023, we’re going to focus our investments on a small number of high priority growth areas. So that means some teams will grow meaningfully, but most other teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year,” Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call in October-end.

The social media company had in June cut plans to hire engineers by at least 30%, with Mark Zuckerberg warning employees to brace for an economic downturn.

Meta’s shareholder Altimeter Capital Management in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg had previously said the company needs to streamline by cutting jobs and capital expenditure, adding that Meta has lost investor confidence as it ramped up spending and pivoted to the metaverse.