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The running list: major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI

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Oracle disclosed Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including jobs eliminated because of AI. “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.

The revelation puts new numbers to what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. 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.

We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the headcount they’re now cutting was hired during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what’s really going on. Below, 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.


GitLab — June 3, 2026. In one of the most recent cuts on this list, 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 to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs.

Google — ongoing through May. 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 — 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. 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, so it can 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 (that they reportedly hate). 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 and the highest single quarter in company history. 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.

General Motors — May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision but that it wasn’t the only reason. GM’s statement said it was “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.” Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles.

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. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically — “engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” — and that the company needed to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”

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, tasked with redesigning the company’s processes “function by function.” Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said 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 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. The company said 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 roughly 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 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.”

Dell — Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell’s total workforce fell about 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 came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.

Oracle — March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobs via terminal emails. The cuts came even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion — savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing.

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.” 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 about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying 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 — about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of “strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” 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.”

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“Glasgow Has Shown What Nigeria Can Achieve When We Invest in Our Athletes—Now We Must Take That Success Back to the Grassroots” — SSA Adeboye

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…Presidential Aide Congratulates Team Nigeria on Historic Commonwealth Games Campaign, Says First in Africa Finish Signals a New Era for Nigerian Sports

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Grassroots Sports Development, Hon. Adeyinka Anthony Adeboye, has congratulated Team Nigeria on its outstanding performance at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, describing the country’s historic campaign as a defining moment in the ongoing transformation of Nigerian sports under the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR.

Speaking at the conclusion of the Games in Glasgow, where he joined the leadership of the National Sports Commission in supporting Team Nigeria throughout the competition, Hon. Adeboye said the country’s achievement of finishing seventh overall, first in Africa, with 10 gold, 7 silver and 7 bronze medals, was a reflection of strategic leadership, improved athlete welfare, quality preparation and renewed national ambition.

Read Also: SPECIAL REPORT: Beyond the Medals — Why Glasgow 2026 Could Be Remembered as the Games That Changed Nigerian Sport Forever

“Glasgow has shown what Nigeria can achieve when we invest in our athletes. Now, we must take that success back to the grassroots. Every medal won here is a reminder that somewhere in our schools, communities and local government areas are thousands of young Nigerians with the potential to become future Commonwealth, Olympic and world champions.”

The Presidential aide noted that beyond the medal count, Team Nigeria’s performances demonstrated that the country is building a broader and more sustainable sporting culture, with podium finishes recorded across athletics, para athletics, para powerlifting, weightlifting and judo.

He described the emergence of young stars and the breaking of long-standing records as evidence that Nigeria is entering a new era where excellence is being driven by deliberate planning rather than chance.

According to Hon. Adeboye, the Games will be remembered for the courage and resilience displayed by athletes who not only won medals but also rewrote history through world records, national milestones and breakthrough performances.

“This has been more than a successful Commonwealth Games campaign. It has been a statement to the world that Nigerian sports is rising again. Our athletes have shown courage, discipline and character, while proving that with the right support they can compete with the very best anywhere in the world.”

The SSA particularly commended athletes who made history during the Games, including those who won Commonwealth titles, broke world records, ended decades-long medal droughts and inspired millions of Nigerians through exceptional performances.

He noted that the achievements of athletes such as Samuel Ogazi, Ezekiel Nathaniel, Goodness Nwachukwu, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, Temitope Adeshina, Jessica Oji, Kayinsola Ajayi, Udodi Onwuzurike, Ella Onojuvwevwo, Ruth Usoro, Enku Ekuta, and the country’s relay teams have demonstrated the enormous depth of talent available in Nigeria.

Hon. Adeboye also applauded the leadership of the National Sports Commission, under the Chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko, and the Director General, Hon. Bukola Olopade, for introducing athlete-focused reforms that have transformed Team Nigeria’s preparation and performance.

He said initiatives such as improved training programmes, enhanced welfare packages and instant financial rewards for medal-winning athletes have created a winning culture that is already delivering tangible results on the international stage.

“The success recorded in Glasgow did not happen overnight. It is the product of visionary leadership, careful planning, proper athlete preparation and a renewed commitment to excellence. The National Sports Commission deserves commendation for creating an environment where Nigerian athletes can focus on achieving greatness.”

The Presidential aide reaffirmed that the next phase of Nigeria’s sporting development must be centred on grassroots sports, stressing that sustained international success can only be achieved by strengthening the talent pipeline from schools and local communities.

He disclosed that his office remains committed to implementing programmes that will expand grassroots sports infrastructure, revive school sports, strengthen talent identification and create opportunities for young athletes across all 774 Local Government Areas of the country.

According to him, the success of Team Nigeria in Glasgow should serve as a catalyst for increased collaboration among government institutions, the private sector, sports federations, educational institutions and development partners.

“Our assignment does not end in Glasgow. This success must inspire us to work even harder to ensure that every gifted Nigerian child has access to facilities, quality coaching and opportunities to compete. That is how we will sustain this momentum and build a lasting sporting legacy for future generations.”

Hon. Adeboye further thanked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his unwavering commitment to repositioning Nigerian sports through the Renewed Hope Agenda, noting that the restoration of the National Sports Commission has already begun to produce measurable results.

He expressed confidence that the performances witnessed in Glasgow would mark the beginning of even greater achievements for Nigerian sports on the continental and global stage.

“Finishing as Africa’s number one nation at the Commonwealth Games is a remarkable achievement, but it should also challenge us to aim even higher. With sustained investment, stronger grassroots development and continued support for our athletes, Nigeria can become one of the world’s leading sporting nations.”

As Team Nigeria returns home with 24 medals and the distinction of being Africa’s highest-ranked nation at Glasgow 2026, Hon. Adeboye urged Nigerians to celebrate the athletes and continue supporting the reforms that are laying the foundation for a brighter future for Nigerian sports.

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FAAN says smoke, not fire, caused emergency at Lagos airport

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The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has clarified that the smoke observed at Terminal 2 of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA), Lagos, on Sunday was not caused by a fire but by the discharge of the terminal’s fire suppression system.

The clarification came hours after the authority initially announced that a fire incident had occurred at the terminal, prompting an emergency response and raising concerns among passengers and airport users.

In its first statement, FAAN said a fire had broken out at Terminal 2 and disclosed that its Aerodrome Rescue and Firefighting Service (ARFFS) had been deployed to contain the situation.

“The FAAN Aerodrome Rescue and Firefighting Service is currently responding to the incident and working diligently to contain the situation,” the authority said, adding that no casualties or loss of life had been recorded.

The announcement triggered emergency response measures at the airport before FAAN issued a fresh update later in the day, clarifying the nature of the incident.

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According to the authority, preliminary investigations showed there was no fire at the terminal.

“Preliminary findings indicate that there was no fire at the terminal. The smoke observed within the affected area resulted from the discharge of the terminal’s FM-200 fire suppression system. The reason for the activation of the fire suppression system is currently being investigated,” FAAN said.

The authority added that normal operations had resumed at the terminal while investigations continue to determine what triggered the fire suppression system.

“Normal operations have since resumed at the terminal, while detailed investigations are ongoing to determine the exact cause of the incident,” it added.

Any report of fire or smoke at an airport automatically triggers emergency response procedures due to the potential risks to passengers, aircraft, and critical airport infrastructure.

FAAN also thanked passengers, airlines, airport users and other stakeholders for their understanding and reiterated its commitment to ensuring the safety and security of airport operations.

Comes five months after a major fire incident at the airport

Although a fire did not cause Sunday’s incident, it came barely five months after a major blaze at the airport’s international terminal disrupted flight operations and damaged critical aviation infrastructure.

In February, PREMIUM TIMES reported that a fire at Terminal 1 of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport forced the temporary closure of the Lagos airfield, causing flight delays and diversions as emergency responders battled the blaze.

The incident left six people injured, while 14 people trapped inside the control tower were rescued. It also damaged critical infrastructure, including weather equipment belonging to the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet).

Following the February incident, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, announced plans to demolish the ageing Terminal 1 after describing the damage as extensive. The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria also ordered a comprehensive structural audit of the affected facility ahead of reconstruction.

READ ALSO: FAAN unveils 2025 bye-laws

While Sunday’s incident was quickly resolved without injuries or significant disruption to flight operations, it has renewed attention on the resilience of critical infrastructure and emergency preparedness at Nigeria’s busiest aviation gateway, coming just five months after the February fire.

The Murtala Muhammed International Airport is Nigeria’s busiest aviation gateway, handling millions of domestic and international passengers annually.

FAAN said investigations are continuing to determine why the FM-200 fire suppression system was activated and promised to provide further updates as more information becomes available.


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