A Bay Area private school funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife is laying off nearly 150 employees ahead of its planned closure this summer — as the tech titan invests billions in artificial intelligence.
The Primary School sent a notice to California’s employment department on April 15 saying it would lay off 147 employees effective June 12 as part of its permanent closure.
The Primary School — which provides tuition-free school education for low-income students since 2016 — called it a “very difficult decision” when it announced last year that it would shutter.
The closure comes as Zuckerberg’s Meta will reportedly spend between $115 and $135 billion on artificial intelligence this year, nearly twice the amount it spent in 2025.
The Primary School is backed by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and operated campuses in East Palo Alto and San Leandro, with a total student population of about 550.
The Initiative will instead commit $50 million over the next few years to Bay Area communities in the form of education savings plans and support specialists.
“Though The Primary School as it exists today will be coming to an end, we sincerely hope that what we have learned and shown to be possible will live on,” a statement said. “We will entrust our partners in this work — both our direct collaborators and our compatriots across the education and health fields — to carry the torch for all families, but especially the most vulnerable.”
The closure will displace several hundred students and overwhelm local schools like the Ravenswood City School District, which is bracing for students from the East Palo Alto campus, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Officials from the district said the shift could cause “an immediate crisis” without additional space opened up.
