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Oracle disclosed Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including jobs eliminated because of AI. \u201cThe adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,\u201d the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing<\/a>. <\/p>\n The revelation puts new numbers to what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month<\/a> in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. <\/p>\n We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink<\/a>, not least because for many of these companies, the headcount they\u2019re now cutting was hired during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what\u2019s really going on. Below, a running look \u2014 in reverse chronological order \u2014 at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.<\/p>\n GitLab<\/strong> \u2014 June 3, 2026. In one of the most recent cuts on this list, GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff<\/a>, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are \u201cpushing competitors to the brink\u201d and that the company had begun a \u201cgenerational rebuild\u201d of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs.<\/p>\n Google<\/strong> \u2014 ongoing through May. Alphabet\u2019s Google has quietly cut<\/a> employees across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity staff, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to exceed $20 billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has cut more than a third of the managers overseeing small teams \u2014 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number \u2014 the cuts have come through a rolling performance review process, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates putting the 2026 total at between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers.<\/p>\n Intuit<\/strong> \u2014 May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs<\/a> \u2014 about 17% of its total workforce \u2014 in a restructuring centered on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told staff the company is reducing complexity and simplifying the structure, so it can deliver better products.<\/p>\n Meta <\/strong>\u2014 May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (that they reportedly hate<\/a>). Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because \u201csuccess isn\u2019t a given\u201d in AI. <\/p>\n Cisco<\/strong> \u2014 May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it\u2019s cutting nearly 4,000 jobs<\/a>, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson said<\/a>: \u201cThis was really not a savings-driven restructure\u2026 this is more [about] realigning \u2026 resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.\u201d <\/p>\n Cloudflare<\/strong> \u2014 May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and the highest single quarter<\/a> in company history. CEO Matthew Prince wrote that<\/a> \u201cthe vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers\u201d \u2014 middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition. <\/p>\n General Motors <\/strong>\u2014 May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision<\/a> but that it wasn\u2019t the only reason. GM\u2019s statement said it was \u201ctransforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.\u201d Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles.<\/p>\n Coinbase<\/strong> \u2014 May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange said it was cutting about 700 employees, or 14% of its staff, as part of a restructuring aimed at addressing market volatility and increasing AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO, and said it would experiment with \u201cone-person teams\u201d combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically \u2014 \u201cengineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and that the company needed to \u201cleverage AI across every facet of our jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n PayPal<\/strong> \u2014 May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years \u2014 north of 4,500 jobs \u2014 as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would \u201caggressively adopt AI\u201d in its development processes and formed a new \u201cAI transformation and simplification\u201d team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company\u2019s processes \u201cfunction by function.\u201d Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.<\/p>\n Microsoft <\/strong>\u2014 April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing how many employees these would impact. CFO Amy Hood said total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3, and is expected to keep declining as the company focuses on \u201cbuilding high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility\u201d amid rising AI investment<\/a>.<\/p>\n Snap <\/strong>\u2014 April 16, 2026. Snap cut roughly 16% of its global workforce<\/a> \u2014 about 1,000 full-time employees \u2014 and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. \u201cRapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,\u201d Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company said it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency.<\/p>\n IBM<\/strong> \u2014 rolling through 2026. Between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, estimates range from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated, bringing IBM\u2019s cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as a routine rebalancing<\/a> affecting \u201ca low single-digit percentage\u201d of its global workforce.<\/p>\n Atlassian<\/strong> \u2014 March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut about 1,600 jobs<\/a> (10% of its workforce) to \u201crebalance\u201d toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said: \u201cOur approach is not \u2018AI replaces people.\u2019 But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn\u2019t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.\u201d <\/p>\n Dell <\/strong>\u2014 Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell\u2019s total workforce fell about 10%<\/a> in fiscal 2026 \u2014 roughly 11,000 jobs<\/a> \u2014 to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with $569 million spent on severance. The cuts came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.<\/p>\n Oracle<\/strong> \u2014 March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobs via terminal emails<\/a>. The cuts came even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion \u2014 savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing.<\/p>\n Block<\/strong> \u2014 February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey\u2019s Block cut 4,000 jobs \u2014 nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. Dorsey wrote on X: \u201cWe\u2019re already seeing that the intelligence tools we\u2019re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.\u201d He added: \u201cI think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n Salesforce<\/strong> \u2014 February 10, 2026. Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit. The company told Fortune<\/a>, \u201cBecause of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we\u2019ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles.\u201d This followed an earlier cut of about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying the company needed \u201cless heads\u201d because AI agents handle the work. <\/p>\n Amazon<\/strong> \u2014 January 28, 2026. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs<\/a>, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 \u2014 about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of \u201cstrengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.\u201d CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that, \u201cAs we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today\u2026 in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n
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