Ashen-faced Mark Zuckerberg is seen on a leaked video call telling executives he will lay off 11,000

An emotionless Mark Zuckerberg offered few words of encouragement to the 11,000 he laid off on Wednesday, a video call leaked hours after the mass shootings were revealed.

Provided by one of the workers affected by the layoffs, the portion of the call shows a pale-faced Zuckerberg appearing before employees largely Wednesday, hours after Meta brass circulated a memo saying it would lay off 13 percent of its staff.

In the short clip, the 38-year-old Facebook founder tries to explain what he ultimately claimed was “his decision” with the layoffs — the first major round in the company’s 18-year history.

In the memo distributed hours earlier, Zuckerberg announced he was making cuts in all aspects of the sprawling company — which recently suffered a massive loss in market value with shares down 70 percent.

Zuckerberg addressed employees virtually Wednesday around 1 p.m. ET to offer a brief follow-up to the apologies aired in the cold correspondence — with the tech mogul’s trademark cold demeanor on display throughout the brief conversation.

Meta – down to just $268 billion from the more than $1 trillion seen last year – owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In addition to the layoffs, the company plans to drastically slow hiring in the coming year to further reduce costs.

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“I know there’s just got to be a range of emotions. I want to say up front that I take full responsibility for this decision,” Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook as a Harvard student in 2004, said in the leaked clip obtained by NBC News .

The call was reportedly one of two separate ones held by the CEO, a source said — one for the terminated employees and one for those not affected.

“I’m the founder and CEO, I’m responsible for the health of our company, for our direction and for deciding how we execute it,” the executive said, adding, “including things like this.”

Zuckerberg would then tell those concerned that he took “full responsibility” for the decision.

“This was ultimately my call,” he said, appearing before workers in an empty conference room at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters at 1 Hacker Way.

“And that was one of the hardest calls I’ve had to make in the 18 years I’ve been running the company,” droned the CEO, adding, “obviously it’s having a big impact on your lives.”

He was then quick to add: ‘But also for our mission.’

Zuckerberg would go on to offer a few words of appreciation to the departing employees, who will receive 16 weeks of severance pay plus two weeks for each year of service, the company said on Tuesday.

“We’re losing people you’ve really put your heart and soul into this place,” stammered the CEO — a one-time coder who has previously been criticized for his cold, calculated approach to management.

“No matter what team you may have worked on, each of you played a role in contributing to the products that billions of people use to connect every day.”

Zuckerberg went on to encourage the ousted workers – who were reportedly killed because the company had been overstaffed due to over-optimism about its growth.

“Each of you is talented and passionate, and each of you has played a role in making Meta the success it is,” he said.

“No matter what team you may have worked on, each of you played a role in contributing to the products that billions of people use to connect every day.”

Just hours earlier, in an email to employees, Zuckerberg told employees the layoffs were “necessary” after the company lost two-thirds of its value in about a year.

“Not only has e-commerce returned to previous trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition and loss of ad signals have caused our revenue to be much lower than I would have expected,” the memo — which offered an apology but was widely criticized as cold — read.

Zuckerberg wrote: “I got it wrong, and I take responsibility for it.”

The memo further saw Zuckerberg stress that his company would now shift resources to “high-priority growth areas”, such as its AI discovery engine, ads and business platforms, and even its largely failed metaverse venture, which has emerged as a giant money pit in past months.

Since 2019, Zuckerberg has personally channeled more than $36 billion of the company’s funds into the dizzying project, which aims to offer users a virtual world free to roam with their own avatars.

The CEO — whose fortune is largely tied up in his company’s valuation — has since failed to see any return on those investments, company earnings reports late last month revealed — and the company has since seen more than $30 billion of those funds evaporate in a matter of months.

The statements show that the boss has staked his company’s future on the technology, sinking tens of billions of dollars into it in the hope it will gain interest from wary, younger users who have increasingly been drawn to other platforms like TikTok.

Consequently, Reality Labs, the division that houses Metaverse and Facebook’s domestic VR units, has racked up billions of dollars in debt as the venture has mostly fallen flat, leading to losses that crush the company’s profits.

While Facebook’s founders are championing Meta’s Metaverse, it’s still far short of its year-end user goal, set at 300,000.

According to documents obtained by the WSJ, the company planned to reach 500,000 users of its virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, by the end of 2022.

The number at the time of writing is less than 200,000, still well short of a revised target of 280,000 by the end of 2022.

The documents also revealed that the majority of these 200,000 users do not return after entering the system once, with many complaining that most areas are bereft of other users.

Meta began publishing financial data for Reality Labs in the fourth quarter of 2021 — the same quarter in which the company reported its first-ever user decline.

Compounding that is the fact that a boom seen during the pandemic that boosted tech companies and their valuations has since turned into a bust — in the face of decades of high inflation and rapidly rising interest rates.

As of the market opening on Thursday, Meta’s share price had risen a modest five percent today.

Bigger increases are expected, however – now that the company has lost over 11,000 full-time employees.

That said, departing staff received a severance package that allowed them 16 weeks of basic pay and an additional two weeks for each year of service.

Staff will also receive any remaining paid time off, Zuckerberg’s memo further revealed.

The company will also reduce discretionary spending and extend the hiring freeze in the first quarter.

Employees will receive health care costs for six months, and those affected will receive theirs Nov. 15, according to the company.

Meta recently predicted a weak holiday quarter and significantly more costs next year that will wipe about $67 billion from the market capitalization, adding to the more than half a trillion dollars in value already lost this year.

The disappointing outlook comes as Meta grapples with slowing global economic growth, competition from TikTok, privacy changes from Apple, concerns about massive spending on the metaverse and the ever-present threat of regulation.

Meta has made a big bet that its Metaverse will be the next big frontier for the tech industry, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg pouring more than $36 billion into the project that many believe – so far at least – will fail.

The CEO has since seen more than $30 billion of those funds disappear in a matter of months, while his net worth — which is largely tied to his company’s valuation — was reported to have lost $88 billion.