Monday.com just joined the club. The Tel Aviv-based project management platform announced it is laying off 20% of its staff. That is roughly 600 people. They call it a restructuring plan. We call it the new normal.
In a recent SEC filing, the company said these cuts support a “leaner, more focused operating model.” They are betting big on an AI-driven growth strategy. Co-founder Eran Zinman tried to soften the blow in a LinkedIn memo. He claimed the move wasn’t about cutting costs. He insisted they aren’t replacing people with bots. It’s about adapting to an AI-first vision.
“We are not doing this to reduce costs,” Zinman told staff.
It’s a familiar script.
Since the start of 2026, U.S. tech companies have wiped out nearly 140,000 roles. Amazon, Oracle, Meta, andMicrosoft did most of the damage. Together, those four accounted for almost 50,00 of the cuts. Meanwhile, they are funneling hundreds of billions into AI data centers.
The market isn’t buying the hype. Financial Times analysis shows companies citing AI as a reason for layoffs have underperformed the Nasdaq by nearly 10% in the month after the news breaks. Investors know the game.
Still, it’s not a total death spiral. Anthropic and OpenAI are hiring like crazy. They are sucking up the talent everyone else is shedding. Even inside the companies cutting staff, jobs are moving. Meta laid off 8,00 people but shuffled 7,00 into new AI roles. IBM is tripling entry-level hiring for hybrid-cloud work even as it slashes headcount elsewhere.
Here is who got cut, when, and why they pointed at AI.
Microsoft Xbox And Infrastructure Cuts In 2026
Microsoft has been quiet about the numbers but loud about the direction. On July 9, 2028, they cut about 4,80 jobs. That represents 2.1% of their global workforce. Most of those roles vanished from the Xbox division. It’s a strange pivot three years after dropping $75 billion for Activision Blizzard.
Separately, the company offered buyouts. They didn’t say how many people took them.
CFO Amy Hood noted that headcount declined year-over-year. She expects it to keep dropping. The goal? High-performing teams that move fast. AI is changing how work gets done. Microsoft admitted that much, even if they claim AI isn’t directly replacing those specific eliminated roles.
Earlier in the year, during April and May, Microsoft ran another voluntary separation program. Again, no specific numbers. Just a steady bleed in headcount.
Oracle’s 21,00 Employee Reduction Over 12 Months
Oracle didn’t announce one big event. It was a slow burn. Starting in early March 2026, employees received terminal emails. The company posted $3.7 billion in net income for that quarter. A 27% jump year-over-year. Remaining performance obligations soared 325%.
Yet, they kept cutting.
By June 22, Oracle disclosed the full scope. Over the previous 12 months, they had reduced their workforce by 21,0 0 people. A 13% drop.
“The adoption and deployment of AI technologies… have resulted… in reductions to our workforce,” the company stated in a regulatory filing.
Savings from these cuts? Redirected straight into AI data centers.
GitLab Flattens Structure For Agentic Workloads
GitLad cut 35 workers on June 3. That’s about 14% of the company. CEO Bill Staples framed it as a survival move. He said agentic workloads were pushing competitors to the brink. GitLad needed a “generational rebuild” of its infrastructure.
They are exiting 22 countries. Flattening management. Partnering with an unnamed AI lab.
The company reported $264 million in Q1 revenue, up 23%. They expect to spend $30 to $3 million on restructuring. It’s a painful reset for 100x growth aspirations.
Google’s Silent Cloud Purge
Google doesn’t like headlines. They prefer rolling performance reviews. Between May 2026 and now, Alphabet’s Google division has quietly shed staff.
The Cloud division hit $20 billion in revenue for the first time. Growth of 63%. The backlog doubled to $46 billion. Despite the money, managers vanished.
Over the past year, Google cut 35% of the managers overseeing small teams. Outside estimates suggest 1,50 to 3,00 engineers were eliminated in 202 alone. No single announcement. Just a structural reorganization that feels like a purge.
Intuit Simplifies For AI
On May 2, Intuit planned to cut 3,00 jobs. Roughly 17% of the workforce. CEO Sasan Goodarzi told staff they were reducing complexity. The goal is simpler structures for better products. AI is the engine behind that simplification.
Meta Shifts 7,0 To AI Roles
Meta’s move in May was messy. They laid off 8,0 employees. About 10% of the workforce. But they didn’t fire them all. They moved 7,0 people into new AI-focused positions.
Mark Zuckerberg said success in AI isn’t guaranteed. Staff reportedly hate the new roles. The cuts were necessary, he argued, because the old ways don’t work anymore.
Cisco Realigns Around Silicon And Security
Cisco cut nearly 4,0 jobs on May 1. That’s 5% of its staff. This wasn’t a cost-saving exercise. CFO Mark Patterson made that clear.
“This was really not a savings-driven restructre,” he said. “This is more [about] realining … resources around silicon, optics, security, and AI.”
They are betting on hardware and security over legacy networking.
Cloudflare Cuts Middle Management
Cloudflare cut 1,100 people. 20% of the workforce. Their quarterly revenue hit a record $639.8 million. Up 34%.
CEO Matthew Prince wrote a blunt memo. He said the vast majority of those laid off were “measures.” Middle management. Finance. Legal. Internal auditing.
Engineering stayed. The rest went.
GM Reevaluates IT In Austin And Detroit
General Motors cut 50 to 600 jobs in May. Mostly IT roles in Austin and Warren, Michigan. They blamed uncertain market conditions. But insiders told CNBC AI played a role.
The company called it a transformation of the IT organization. Ironically, GM still had 80 open IT positions. Roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous driving remained unfilled.
Coinbase Experiments With One-Person Teams
Coinbase cut 700 employees. 14% of its staff. CEO Brian Armstrong said AI changes the pace of work.
“Engineers use AI to ship in days what took a team weeks,” Armstrong wrote.
They flattened the org chart to five layers. Now they are testing “one-person teams” that combine engineering, design, and product. It’s an experiment in radical efficiency.
PayPal’s Two-Year Turnaround
PayPal announced plans on May 5 to cut 4,5 jobs. About 20% of the workforce, over two to three years. CEO Enrique Lores wants aggressive AI adoption.
He formed an “AI transformation and simplification” team. They report directly to him. They will redesign processes function by function. AI won’t just help with code. It will touch customer service, risk management, and support.
Snap Cuts Repetitive Work
Snap cut 1,00 full-time employees on April 1. Another 30 open roles closed. CEO Evan Spiegel pointed to AI advancements.
He said rapid AI progress lets teams cut repetitive work. It increases velocity. Small squads are already using AI tools for Snapchat+ and ad infrastructure. The rest of the workforce doesn’t fit that model.
IBM’s Rolling Rebalance
IBM has been cutting since 202. Between Q4 205 and April 206 Red Hat reductions, estimates range from 3, to 9,0 U.S. positions. The total cumulative cuts since September 22 exceed 15,00.
But here is the twist. IBM is tripling entry-level hiring in the U.S. for AI and hybrid-cloud roles. They replaced roughly 20 HR positions with AI agents. A spokesperson called the Q4 cuts a “routine rebalancing.”
Atlassian Acknowledges The Shift
Atlassian cut 1,6 jobs in March. 10% of the workforce. Shares rose 2% on the news.
CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes refused to say AI replaces people. But he admitted the truth.
“It would be disingenuous to pretent AI doesn’t change the mix of skills… or the number of roles.”
Dell’s Server Bet
Dell’s workforce fell 1 in fiscal 202. About 11, jobs gone. From 1,0 to 97, employees. They spent $569 million on severance.
Why? To fund AI-optimized servers. Revenue for those servers is expected to double in fiscal 27. The human cost was the price of admission.
The story is simple. Tech companies are building machines that can do the work. Then they fire the people who used to do it. The survivors? They are the ones building the machines. Or they are the ones the machines don’t replace yet.
