Facebook’s parent company is the latest to pull out of an office deal in New York amid a weak economy and internal budget cuts.
Meta is looking to close its office at 225 Park Ave. South in Manhattan, Bloomberg reported citing people familiar with the matter.
“Two Twenty-Five Park Avenue South has served as a great bridging space to take us to our new offices at Hudson Yards and Farley,” said a Meta spokesperson. the fortune “We are working to ensure we make focused and balanced investments to support our most strategic long-term priorities. We remain strongly committed to New York and further anchoring our local footprint.”
The California-based tech giant has been scaling back its expansion in the city. Earlier this year, it abandoned plans to lease 300,000 square feet of workspace at Astor Place, where it already has an existing office, according to Bloomberg. The company had also planned to add more office space at New York’s Hudson Yards, but has since put that on hold.
Other tech companies have also retreated to New York. Amazon was in talks with JP Morgan & Chase to lease some of its office space, but then reportedly called off the talks.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has spoken about trying to fight the slowing economy that he recently described on a call with employees as one of the “worst downturns we’ve seen in recent history,” according to Bloomberg. The company is cutting budgets, including slowing hiring and downsizing, while it plans to reorganize some of its business units.
It would be the first major budget cut at Meta since its founding 18 years ago.
Zuckerberg has pushed Meta, which also has Instagram and Whatsapp, to focus more on the metaverse, a largely unrealized virtual world. But the company’s huge spending on the project is not expected to pay off for years while advertising, its core business, faces challenges as marketers cut spending due to the sour economy .
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