More than 120,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2026, and for many of the largest employers, artificial intelligence is the stated reason. Microsoft said Monday it eliminated about 4,800 roles, or 2.1% of its global workforce, adding to a wave of cuts that has swept the industry this year. The company said the roles being cut are “not being replaced by AI,” but acknowledged that “AI is changing how work gets done” and automating everyday tasks.
The cuts continue a pattern that feels increasingly familiar: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the reductions. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Also read: Amazon puts Mechanical Turk on life support, halts new customer sign-ups
Below is a running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.
Oracle — June 22, 2026
Oracle disclosed in late June that it had reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, more cuts than previously known. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing.
Also read: What is Mistral AI? A deep look at the French OpenAI challenger
GitLab — June 3, 2026
GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company had begun a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads.
Google — ongoing through 2026
Alphabet’s Google has quietly cut 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. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number — 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.
Intuit — May 20, 2026
Intuit announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs — about 17% of its total workforce — 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 to deliver better products.
Meta — 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. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because “success isn’t a given” in AI.
Cisco — May 14, 2026
Cisco announced it’s cutting nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson said: “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 cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year. CEO Matthew Prince wrote that “the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers” — middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition.
Coinbase — 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 “one-person teams” combining engineering, design, and product roles.
PayPal — May 5, 2026
PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years — north of 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.
Microsoft — 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 “building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility” amid rising AI investment.
Snap — April 16, 2026
Snap cut roughly 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.
Atlassian — March 11, 2026
Atlassian cut about 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 said: “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.”
Block — February 26-27, 2026
Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. 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.”
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.”
Amazon — January 28, 2026
Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 — about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. CEO Andy Jassy had said 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.”
The trend shows no signs of slowing. According to Layoffs.fyi, a tracker that has monitored industry layoffs since 2020, roughly 120,000 tech roles have now been cut in 2026. For many workers, the question is no longer whether AI will change their jobs, but how many jobs will remain after the restructuring is complete.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are tech companies laying off workers while reporting record profits?
Many companies are restructuring to invest heavily in AI infrastructure and automation, which they say reduces the need for certain roles. Critics argue that post-pandemic over-hiring is also a factor, and that AI is sometimes used as a convenient rationale for cost-cutting.
Which tech companies have made the largest AI-related layoffs in 2026?
Oracle cut 21,000 jobs over 12 months, Amazon eliminated 16,000 corporate roles in January, and Block cut 4,000 jobs, nearly half its workforce. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees while moving others into AI-focused roles.
Are the laid-off roles being replaced by AI?
Most companies say the cuts are not a direct replacement by AI, but acknowledge that AI is changing how work is done and reducing the need for certain functions, particularly in middle management, customer support, and repetitive tasks.
How many tech workers have been laid off in 2026 so far?
According to Layoffs.fyi, roughly 120,000 tech roles have been cut in 2026, with May being the single highest month for layoffs in years.
Will the layoffs continue?
Many companies, including PayPal and IBM, have announced multi-year restructuring plans that suggest further reductions are likely. The trend is expected to continue as companies reorganize around AI and automation.
Be the first to comment