Tech layoffs citing AI reached their highest monthly level in years during May 2026, even as the companies announcing those cuts posted record revenues and expanding backlogs. The most recent number to land came from Oracle, which disclosed in a June 22 annual regulatory filing that it had reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%. The company stated plainly: ‘The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce.’
Tech Layoffs Citing AI: The Numbers Behind the Trend
The scale of what is happening is no longer anecdotal. U.S. employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May 2026, a 16% increase from April and the highest May total since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
AI was cited as the primary reason for almost 40% of those May cuts, up from 26% in April, 25% in March, 10% in February, and 7% in January. The cumulative toll: 87,714 AI-attributed job cuts in the first five months of 2026 alone, already surpassing the 54,836 AI-attributed cuts recorded across the entirety of 2025, per the same Challenger report.
CNBC reported on the Challenger findings, noting that AI has now become the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs. The pattern is consistent across the sector: strong financials, shrinking headcount, AI cited as both engine and justification.
Company by Company: A Rolling Record of Cuts
GitLab (3 June 2026) laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment. According to a summary of the company’s SEC 8-K filing reviewed by LayoffHedge, GitLab had approximately 2,580 team members across 60 countries as of January 31, 2026. The restructuring exits 22 of those 60 countries, trimming its geographic footprint by roughly 37%. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are ‘pushing competitors to the brink’ and described a ‘generational rebuild’ of core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. The company is also partnering with an unspecified AI lab to design and rebuild its infrastructure, constructing APIs optimised for agents to store and retrieve context, according to TechCrunch. First-quarter revenue came in at $264 million, up 23% year-over-year; restructuring costs are expected to reach $30 to $35 million.
Intuit (20 May 2026) announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs, about 17% of its workforce, restructuring around AI and reduced organisational complexity.
Meta (20–21 May 2026) laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 into new AI-focused roles. Mark Zuckerberg told staff that ‘success isn’t a given’ in AI.
Cisco (14 May 2026) cut nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce. CFO Mark Patterson said: ‘This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning … resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.’
General Motors (12 May 2026) eliminated 500 to 600 IT roles in Austin and Warren, Michigan. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role, though was not the sole reason. GM said it was ‘transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.’
Cloudflare (7–8 May 2026) cut about 20% of its workforce, roughly 1,100 people, despite reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and its highest single quarter to date. CEO Matthew Prince described most of those laid off as ‘measurers’: middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition.
Coinbase (5 May 2026) cut about 700 employees, 14% of staff, flattening its structure to five organisational layers. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that ‘engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks.’
PayPal (5 May 2026) announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years, more than 4,500 jobs, under a restructuring centred on AI adoption. CEO Enrique Lores said the company would ‘aggressively adopt AI’ across development, customer service, support operations, and risk management.
Snap (16 April 2026) cut roughly 1,000 full-time employees, about 16% of its global workforce. CEO Evan Spiegel wrote: ‘Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers.’
Microsoft (April–May 2026) offered voluntary separation packages without disclosing total numbers. CFO Amy Hood confirmed total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3 and expected further declines as the company built ‘high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility.’
IBM (rolling through 2026) has eliminated an estimated 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions across Q4 2025 and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, pushing its cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported the company plans to triple U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents.
Atlassian (11 March 2026) cut about 1,600 jobs, 10% of its workforce. 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 (26–27 February 2026) eliminated 4,000 jobs, nearly half its workforce. Jack Dorsey wrote on X: ‘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.’
Dell (disclosed March 2026, fiscal year 2026) shed roughly 11,000 jobs, about 10% of its workforce, spending $569 million on severance. The company projected its AI-optimised server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.
Oracle (March 2026, with full disclosure 22 June 2026) began notifying employees of cuts in March even as it posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, and remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion. The 21,000 total was confirmed only in the June annual filing.
Salesforce (10 February 2026) laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, and data analytics. 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 (28 January 2026) cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025. CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025: ‘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.’
With AI-attributed cuts already outpacing all of 2025 before the year is half over, the next question for investors and employees alike is whether the second half brings a plateau or an acceleration.
