Monday.com, the Tel Aviv-based work management software company celebrated for its vibrant and customizable project-tracking boards, has become the latest prominent tech firm to attribute significant job cuts, at least in part, to the transformative influence of artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, the company disclosed in an SEC filing its intent to lay off approximately 20% of its global workforce, amounting to just over 600 employees. This substantial reduction is framed as a "restructuring plan" intrinsically linked to the "ongoing transformation of its product, marketing, and go-to-market strategy," all in service of fostering "a leaner, more focused operating model" while simultaneously accelerating investment in its "AI-driven growth strategy."
This move by Monday.com, which maintains two offices in the United States, signals a complex shift in the tech landscape. While co-founder Eran Zinman communicated to employees via a LinkedIn memo that the decision "was not made to reduce costs or replace people with AI," he nonetheless positioned it as a critical adaptation to an "AI-first vision" that the company articulated roughly a year prior, when it embarked on a comprehensive, platform-wide AI rebranding initiative. The company anticipates incurring net restructuring charges ranging from $45 million to $55 million but paradoxically projects robust year-over-year revenue growth of up to 20% for 2026, underscoring a strategic reallocation of resources rather than a purely defensive cost-cutting measure.
The Broader Tech Exodus and AI’s Role
Monday.com’s announcement arrives amidst a tumultuous period for the U.S. tech sector. A recent analysis by the Financial Times reveals that nearly 140,000 jobs have been eliminated across American tech companies since the beginning of this year alone. A significant portion of these cuts, almost 50,000, can be attributed to industry behemoths such as Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft, all of whom are simultaneously channeling hundreds of billions of dollars into ambitious AI data center buildouts and foundational research. This pattern suggests a widespread strategic pivot, where companies are streamlining operations and reallocating capital towards the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, often at the expense of existing roles.
Interestingly, the Financial Times analysis also highlighted a skeptical market reaction to this trend. Companies that explicitly cited AI as a factor in their job cuts have, on average, underperformed the Nasdaq composite index by nearly 10% in the 30 trading days following their announcements. This market behavior suggests that investors may not fully endorse the narratives presented by these companies, perhaps questioning the immediate financial benefits of AI-driven restructuring or harboring concerns about the long-term implications for growth and innovation.
A Shifting Landscape, Not Uniform Bleakness
Despite the significant scale of layoffs, the employment picture within the tech industry is not uniformly bleak. The Financial Times observes that specialized AI-focused companies, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, are experiencing rapid growth and are actively recruiting, effectively absorbing some of the talent shed by larger, more diversified tech firms. Furthermore, within some of the very companies making cuts, headcount is undergoing a strategic reallocation rather than an outright disappearance. Meta, for instance, earlier this year transitioned approximately 7,000 employees into new roles explicitly centered around AI development and application, even as it simultaneously laid off 8,000 others. Similarly, IBM has declared its intention to triple entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even in the wake of its own recent workforce reductions, illustrating a profound shift in required skill sets and strategic priorities. This indicates a significant industry-wide re-skilling and re-tooling effort, where traditional roles are being phased out in favor of positions more aligned with the demands of an AI-centric future.
Chronology of AI-Influenced Tech Layoffs (Reverse Chronological Order)
The following timeline details significant layoffs announced by major tech companies this year, where AI was explicitly or implicitly cited as a contributing factor, illustrating a systemic industry transformation.
Microsoft – July 9, 2026: Microsoft announced the elimination of approximately 4,800 roles, representing 2.1% of its global workforce. The majority of these cuts impacted its Xbox gaming unit, signaling a significant restructuring of the business just three years after its colossal $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. While the company maintained that these role eliminations were "not being replaced by AI," it candidly acknowledged that "AI is changing how work gets done." CFO Amy Hood further noted a year-over-year decline in total headcount for fiscal Q3, with expectations for continued reductions as the company prioritizes "building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility" amid surging AI investments. Separately, Microsoft also offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, though the total number of employees impacted by these offers was not disclosed.
Oracle – June 22, 2026: Oracle revealed in late June that its workforce had shrunk by a substantial 21,000 employees over the preceding 12 months, marking a 13% decline. This disclosure brought to light a larger scale of cuts than previously understood, with AI explicitly cited as a factor. In an annual financial regulatory filing, the company stated, "The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," clearly linking technological advancement to staffing decisions.
GitLab – June 3, 2026: GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, constituting about 14% of its staff. CEO Bill Staples explained that these cuts were necessary to fund critical AI infrastructure investments and to manage surging traffic generated by "agentic workloads" – AI systems autonomously performing tasks. Staples warned that such workloads were "pushing competitors to the brink" and declared that GitLab had initiated a "generational rebuild" of its core infrastructure to support what he termed "100x growth requirements." The company is also exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and collaborating with an undisclosed AI lab to re-engineer its platform for agent-scale operations. Despite reporting first-quarter revenue of $264 million, a 23% year-over-year increase, GitLab expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs.
Google – Ongoing through May 2026: Alphabet’s Google has implemented a series of "quiet cuts" across various divisions, particularly impacting its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and cybersecurity staff linked to Mandiant. These reductions occurred even as Google Cloud revenue surged by 63% to exceed $20 billion for the first time, and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has also significantly reduced its managerial ranks, cutting more than a third of managers overseeing small teams (35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports). Unlike many companies on this list, Google has not announced a single, overarching layoff number; instead, cuts have been dispersed through rolling performance reviews, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations. Outside estimates place Google’s total 2026 cuts at between 1,500 and over 3,000 engineers.
Intuit – May 20, 2026: Intuit, the financial software giant behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, announced plans to eliminate approximately 3,000 jobs, representing about 17% of its total workforce. This restructuring is primarily aimed at reducing organizational complexity and reallocating resources towards AI development. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly informed staff that the company was streamlining its structure to deliver better products more efficiently, signaling a clear strategic pivot enabled by AI.
Meta – May 20-21, 2026: Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, while concurrently shifting around 7,000 employees into newly created AI-focused roles. Reports indicated that many employees transferred to these AI units found the experience challenging, with some describing it as a "soul-crushing gulag." CEO Mark Zuckerberg justified the cuts by emphasizing that "success isn’t a given" in the rapidly evolving field of AI, necessitating agile and focused teams.
Cisco – May 14, 2026: Cisco announced plans to cut nearly 4,000 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and record quarterly revenue. CFO Mark Patterson clarified that "This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning… resources around silicon, optics, security and AI," underscoring a strategic reallocation of talent and investment towards key technological growth areas.
Cloudflare – May 7-8, 2026: Cloudflare cut approximately 20% of its workforce, impacting 1,100 people. This occurred even as the company reported record quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, a 34% year-over-year increase. CEO Matthew Prince publicly stated that "the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers" – a term he used to describe employees in middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition roles. He directly linked these redundancies to AI, implying automation had rendered many of these oversight and administrative functions obsolete.
General Motors – May 12, 2026: GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, primarily in IT roles located in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan. The automaker cited a reevaluation of workforce needs amidst uncertain market conditions. A source familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision, though it wasn’t the sole factor. GM’s official statement affirmed its commitment to "transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future." Despite the cuts, GM still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including specialized roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles, highlighting a targeted shift in its talent requirements.
Coinbase – May 5, 2026: The cryptocurrency exchange announced cuts affecting approximately 700 employees, or 14% of its staff. This restructuring aimed to address market volatility and enhance AI efficiency. Coinbase flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO and declared an intent to experiment with "one-person teams" combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong emphasized that AI had dramatically accelerated the pace of work, stating, "engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks," and stressed the company’s need to "leverage AI across every facet of our jobs."
PayPal – May 5, 2026: PayPal announced plans for a significant workforce reduction, cutting around 20% of its staff – over 4,500 jobs – over the next two to three years. This forms part of a broader turnaround strategy centered on aggressive AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores informed investors that the company would "aggressively adopt AI" in its development processes and had established a new "AI transformation and simplification" team reporting directly to him. This team is tasked with redesigning the company’s processes "function by function," indicating a deep integration of AI beyond just coding, extending into customer service, support operations, and risk management.
Microsoft – April-May 2026: In addition to the July cuts, Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations during this period, without disclosing the exact number of employees impacted. CFO Amy Hood reiterated that total headcount was declining year-over-year in fiscal Q3 and was expected to continue shrinking as the company focused on "building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility" amidst its rapidly increasing AI investment.
Snap – April 16, 2026: Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, cut approximately 16% of its global workforce, amounting to about 1,000 full-time employees, and closed over 300 open roles. CEO Evan Spiegel explicitly cited "AI advancements" as a key driver for these changes. In an SEC-filed memo, Spiegel wrote, "Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers." The company noted that small teams were already utilizing AI tools to enhance Snapchat+, improve ad platform performance, and boost infrastructure efficiency.
IBM – Rolling through 2026: IBM has seen rolling layoffs throughout 2026, with estimates ranging from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions. This brings IBM’s cumulative total since September 2024 to over 15,000. While reducing certain roles, Bloomberg reported that IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud positions, illustrating a significant shift in its workforce composition. Notably, roughly 200 HR positions were reportedly replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson characterized the Q4 2025 round as a "routine rebalancing" affecting "a low single-digit percentage" of its global workforce, a common corporate euphemism for layoffs.
Atlassian – March 11, 2026: Atlassian, known for its collaboration software like Jira and Confluence, cut approximately 1,600 jobs, representing 10% of its workforce. This move was described as a "rebalance" towards AI and enterprise sales, and its shares surprisingly rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes articulated a nuanced stance: "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 – January 30, 2026 (Disclosed in March 2026): Dell’s total workforce decreased by approximately 10% in fiscal 2026, translating to roughly 11,000 jobs, bringing its employee count down from 108,000 to about 97,000. The company incurred $569 million in severance costs. These significant reductions occurred as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027, indicating a strategic shift towards high-growth, AI-centric hardware solutions.
Oracle – March 5-31, 2026: As part of the larger 21,000-person reduction disclosed in June, Oracle began informing employees of upcoming job cuts via "terminal emails" throughout March. These initial cuts, which were part of a broader strategy to redirect savings towards massive AI data center investments, occurred even as Oracle reported a robust $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, a 27% year-over-year increase, and a staggering 325% surge in remaining performance obligations to $553 billion.
Block – February 26-27, 2026: Jack Dorsey’s Block implemented drastic cuts, eliminating 4,000 jobs – nearly half its workforce, reducing its headcount from over 10,000 to under 6,000. Dorsey took to X (formerly Twitter) to explain the rationale: "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 further predicted a rapid industry shift, stating, "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 proprietary Agentforce AI unit. The company informed Fortune that "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 round of cuts that reduced its customer-support team from approximately 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff explicitly stating the company needed "less heads" because AI agents were handling the workload.
Amazon – January 28, 2026: Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following an earlier reduction of 14,000 in October 2025, resulting in a 9% reduction of its corporate workforce in just three months. The company stated this was part of an effort to "strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy." CEO Andy Jassy had indicated 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."
Implications and the Future of Work
The sheer volume and widespread nature of these layoffs, explicitly or implicitly linked to AI, underscore a profound paradigm shift in the global tech industry. Companies are not merely cutting costs; they are fundamentally redesigning their operational models and workforce structures to integrate advanced AI capabilities. This involves massive investments in AI infrastructure, research, and specialized talent, often leading to the displacement of roles deemed less efficient or automatable.
The analysis by the Financial Times regarding market skepticism is particularly salient. While companies project long-term gains from AI investments, the immediate impact of job cuts, even those justified by technological advancement, can signal instability or a lack of clear return on investment in the short term. Investors may be wary of the potential for over-reliance on AI rhetoric to mask underlying business challenges or simply view these large-scale restructurings as inherently disruptive.
For the workforce, these trends present a dual challenge and opportunity. While many roles are being eliminated, particularly those involving repetitive tasks, middle management, or traditional support functions, there is a burgeoning demand for new skills in AI development, data science, machine learning engineering, and AI ethics. The examples of Meta reallocating staff and IBM tripling entry-level AI hiring illustrate a critical need for re-skilling and continuous learning. The phrase "shipping in days what used to take weeks," as articulated by Coinbase’s CEO, highlights the accelerated pace of work enabled by AI, demanding greater efficiency and adaptability from remaining employees.
The ongoing transformation suggests a future where "leaner, more focused operating models" and "high-performing teams" are the norm, driven by AI-powered tools and automation. This will likely lead to a more specialized and highly skilled workforce, but also one that is under constant pressure to adapt to rapidly evolving technological landscapes. The challenge for both companies and individuals will be to navigate this transition effectively, ensuring that the promise of AI-driven growth is realized without exacerbating social and economic disparities. The tech industry, long a harbinger of future trends, is providing a real-time case study of how AI is fundamentally reshaping the nature of work.
