AI layoffs in 2025 crossed 50,000: 4 biggest technology companies that called out AI in their job cuts announcement and how

AI-related job cuts crossed 50,000 in 2025 in the US alone, according to new data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (via CNBC). The firm said that companies directly cited artificial intelligence (AI) as the reason for 54,883 job cuts this year – making it one of the biggest drivers of layoffs across the tech industry. The job cuts come at a time when AI is being used as a cost-cutting tool by the companies to deal with inflation, high tariffs, and pressure to improve profitability. A recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study released in November also suggested that AI can handle 11.7% of U.S. jobs and could save companies $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, healthcare, and professional services.


However, some experts question whether AI is the real reason for such widespread layoffs. Fabian Stephany, assistant professor of AI and work at the Oxford Internet Institute, told CNBC that many companies overhired during the pandemic and may now be using AI as a convenient “excuse” for downsizing.



Despite the debate, many companies, including world’s biggest tech companies explicitly named AI as a reason for restructuring this year. Here we look at four big tech companies that called out AI in their job cuts announcement

Amazon

The e-commerce giant laid off 14,000 corporate employees this year, one of its largest. Announcing the job cuts, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti said that the company is ‘making organizational changes … which will include reducing in some areas and hiring in others’.


“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” Galetti explained.



Though days later at the company’s earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explained “The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven, not right now at least. It really — it's culture”.

Microsoft

Microsoft conducted at least four major rounds of workforce reduction, cutting around 15,000 jobs this year. Julia Liuson, president of Microsoft's Developer Division, then instructed managers that artificial intelligence usage "should be part of your holistic reflections on an individual's performance and impact." In internal emails, Liuson then declared that "using AI is no longer optional — it's core to every role and every level".


The company also said that it is considering adding formal AI usage metrics to performance reviews as it pushes for greater adoption of its Copilot AI services, adding some teams are exploring including specific AI usage benchmarks in next fiscal year's employee evaluations, according to sources familiar with the plans.

Salesforce

In September, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff confirmed that 4,000 customer support roles were cut with the help of AI automation. Benioff then said AI is already doing “up to 50% of the work” at the company and that fewer staff are needed for many support functions. During an appearance on the "Logan Bartlett" podcast, he also described it as "eight of the most exciting months of my career" explaining how AI technology has transformed the company's operations.


"There were more than 100 million leads that we have not called back at Salesforce in the last 26 years because we have not had enough people," he explained. "But we now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us."


The company uses an "omnichannel supervisor" system that coordinates collaboration between human and AI agents, allowing AI to recognise when tasks require human intervention.

IBM

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna revealed that AI chatbots had replaced several hundred HR roles. The company eliminated job roles in marketing and communications and also replaced around 200 human resources positions with AI agents. Krishna said IBM is hiring in areas that require deeper critical thinking such as engineering, sales, and marketing.