Technology companies have increasingly come to explain staff cuts by the adoption of artificial intelligence, even when their business continues to grow. This is what TechCrunch writes.

As the outlet notes, in some cases AI genuinely changes the structure of work, while in others it becomes a convenient explanation for restructuring, cost-cutting and correcting the consequences of excessive hiring during the pandemic.

Tracker data

At the time of publication TechCrunch, citing TrueUp, spoke of 363 rounds of layoffs in the technology sector since the start of 2026. They affected nearly 150,000 people, and the average pace was 974 employees per day.

As of June 15, the TrueUp tracker already showed 389 cases of layoffs and 151,998 employees who had lost their jobs. The average pace was 916 people per day.

Separately, the TechCrunch authors cited data from the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas: in May, employers in the US announced 97,006 job cuts, with 38,242 layoffs falling on the technology sector — the highest since August 2024.

Artificial intelligence became the most frequently cited reason for cuts for the third month in a row. Since the start of 2026, employers have cited it in connection with 87,714 layoffs, or 22% of all announced cuts.

Who cut staff

Among the examples, TechCrunch named Block, Cloudflare, Meta Platforms and GitLab.

In February, Block cut more than 4,000 employees, reducing its headcount from over 10,000 to fewer than 6,000 people. The head of the fintech company, Jack Dorsey, said that AI tools were changing the principles of building and managing an organization. However, he later admitted that Block had over-hired people during the pandemic.

In May, the provider of network and cloud infrastructure Cloudflare announced cuts of more than 1,100 employees. The company said that over three months internal use of artificial intelligence had grown by more than 600%, and that the team runs thousands of AI agent sessions daily.

According to Reuters, on May 20 Meta Platforms planned to begin the first wave of cuts of about 10% of its staff, or around 8,000 people. The agency's sources linked the decision to the company's restructuring around AI and improving efficiency. Meta declined to comment on the timing and scale of the cuts.

The software development platform GitLab reported cuts of about 14% of its staff, or 350 employees. The company also decided to exit 22 countries in order to reduce the team's geographic footprint by about 37%. In the same report GitLab pointed to the development of the GitLab Duo Agent Platform and integrations with Anthropic's Claude models, Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI.

In addition, other cases of cuts are known:

• according to media reports, in April the Oracle corporation began laying off thousands of employees amid a falling stock price and large capital expenditures on developing AI infrastructure;
• the company Snap planned to cut about 1,000 full-time employees — roughly 16% of its global team.

A "silver bullet" for layoffs

Venture investor Marc Andreessen, in a conversation with podcaster Harry Stebbings, said that large companies often remain bloated after a period of active hiring. He called AI a "silver bullet" for justifying cuts and added that most of them are connected not with automation but with managerial mistakes and excess staff.

TechCrunch noted that this narrative heightens social tension. On the one hand, companies are laying off tens of thousands of employees and citing AI, which may increase distrust toward the industry. On the other hand, the growth of the artificial intelligence market is creating large fortunes for the founders, investors and early employees of AI companies.

Recall that in February OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused large companies of using AI as a pretext for layoffs. In his view, over time the impact of automation on the labor market will only grow.

In May, the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that companies do not have the right to fire employees solely because of replacing them with artificial intelligence.

Source: ForkLog