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European Parliament President Antonio Tajani (R) welcomes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) at the European Parliament, prior to his audition on the data privacy scandal on May 22, 2018 at the European Union headquarters in Brussels.
John Thys / AFP/Getty ImagesFacebook will be adding thousands of people to its offices across Europe, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Tuesday.
In the Facebook CEO's opening statement to the European Parliament on Tuesday, Zuckerberg discussed his commitment to Europe, pointing out that its European headquarters is in Ireland, and its artificial intelligence research lab in Paris.
Facebook has offices across 12 cities in Europe, and they'll be seeing plenty of new faces by the end of the year, Zuckerberg told European officials on Tuesday.
"By the end of 2018, Facebook will employ 10,000 people across 12 European cities, up from 7,000 today," Zuckerberg said. "And we will continue to invest in Europe in the years ahead."
That hiring spree echoes Facebook's efforts in the US, where the social network promised to hire 10,000 new security and content moderation staffers by the end of 2018. The company last month revealed was already halfway to its hiring goal. It's a huge investment -- one that's going help to increase Facebook's projected spending by up to $12.3 billion in 2018, to a potential total of more than $32.7 billion. (In 2017, it was just under $20.5 billion.)
Zuckerberg has said the hit to Facebook's profitability is necessary to address concerns that bad actors in Russia had used Facebook to spread propaganda and misinformation during the 2016 US presidential election. Since then, the company has been dealing with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political consultancy was able to gain access to data on as many as 87 million Facebook users without their consent.
Zuckerberg is testifying to the European Parliament about a month after he testified to Congress in Washington, DC. He's been summoned to both after Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, as lawmakers around the world question how much data Facebook holds, and scrutinize how the social network protects them.
Facebook's CEO has also talked about using and improving AI algorithms to better monitor the social media's 2.2 billion users.
"I believe deeply in what we're doing. And when we address these challenges, I know we'll look back and view helping people connect and giving more people a voice as a positive force here in Europe and around the world," Zuckerberg said.