Major Tech Layoffs in 2026: Employers Cite AI

Oracle announced on Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the last 12 months, representing a 13% decline. This figure exceeds previous estimates and includes positions eliminated due to AI integration. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company stated in an annual financial regulatory filing.

This disclosure highlights a growing trend in the tech sector: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously reducing staff, citing AI as both the driver of growth and the cause for layoffs. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, tech layoffs reached their highest single-month total in years in May, with AI being the most frequently cited reason.

We previously discussed why this rationale may warrant reconsideration, particularly since many of these positions were filled during the pandemic hiring surge. Below is a reverse-chronological overview of major tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year, citing AI as a key factor.

GitLab — June 3, 2026. In one of the latest cuts on this list, GitLab laid off approximately 350 workers, or 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investments and manage surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples stated that agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company has initiated a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure to support what he described as 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting operations in 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unnamed AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, a 23% year-over-year increase, and anticipates $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs.

Google — ongoing through May. Alphabet’s Google has quietly reduced staff across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity teams, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to surpass $20 billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has reduced the number of managers overseeing small teams by 35%. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has not released a single overall layoff number; reductions have occurred through rolling performance reviews, voluntary buyout programs, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates placing the 2026 total between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers.

Intuit — May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminate approximately 3,000 jobs, or 17% of its total workforce, in a restructuring focused on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly informed staff that the company is simplifying its structure to deliver better products.

Meta — May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (which they reportedly dislike). Zuckerberg told staff that the cuts were necessary because “success isn’t a given” in AI.

Cisco — May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it is cutting nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson stated: “This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning … resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.”

Cloudflare — May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare reduced its workforce by about 20% (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, a 34% year-over-year increase and the highest single quarter in company history. CEO Matthew Prince noted that “the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers” — including middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition staff.

General Motors — May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, primarily in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, stating it was reassessing workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A source familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision but was not the sole factor. GM’s statement indicated it was “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.” Despite the cuts, the company still had approximately 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles.

Coinbase — May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange announced it was cutting approximately 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 stated it would experiment with “one-person teams” combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI has dramatically changed the pace of work — “engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” — and that the company needs to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”

PayPal — May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut approximately 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years — more than 4,500 jobs — as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would “aggressively adopt AI” in its development processes and formed a new “AI transformation and simplification” team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company’s processes “function by function.” Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, stating that AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.

Microsoft — April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing the number of employees affected. CFO Amy Hood stated that total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3 and is expected to continue declining as the company focuses on “building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility” amid rising AI investment.

Snap — April 16, 2026. Snap cut approximately 16% of its global workforce — about 1,000 full-time employees — and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. “Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company stated it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency.

IBM — 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’s 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 approximately 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as a routine rebalancing affecting “a low single-digit percentage” of its global workforce.

Atlassian — March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut approximately 1,600 jobs (10% of its workforce) to “rebalance” toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes stated: “Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people.’ But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”

Dell — Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell’s total workforce fell approximately 10% in fiscal 2026 — roughly 11,000 jobs — to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with $569 million spent on severance. The cuts occurred as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.

Oracle — March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began notifying employees of thousands of job cuts via terminal emails. The reductions occurred even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, a 27% year-over-year increase, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion — savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts, which eventually totaled 21,000 over 12 months, were disclosed by Oracle in its June 22 annual filing.

Block — February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce, reducing it from over 10,000 to under 6,000. Dorsey wrote on X: “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re 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.” He added: “I 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.”

Salesforce — 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, “Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles.” This followed an earlier cut of approximately 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff stating the company needed “less heads” because AI agents handle the work.

Amazon — January 28, 2026. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 — approximately 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company stated it was part of “strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” CEO Andy Jassy had stated in June 2025 that, “As 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… 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.”