© Chaoyong AI Editorial Team

On July 6, Microsoft announced approximately 4,800 layoffs, representing 2.1% of its global workforce, marking the latest in a series of AI-related layoffs in the tech industry. The company stated that the affected positions "will not be replaced by AI" but acknowledged that "AI is changing the way we work" by automating many routine tasks.

For many tech professionals, such layoffs have become a "pandemic": companies report record revenues while cutting staff, using AI both as a growth engine and a reason for layoffs.

According to data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, May saw the highest monthly tech layoffs in years, with AI cited as the most frequent reason.

Layoffs.fyi, a database tracking industry layoffs since 2020, reports that approximately 120,000 tech jobs have been cut so far in 2026.

We previously wrote about why this logic warrants rethinking by companies—especially since, for many of these firms, the teams being laid off now are the same ones that expanded during the pandemic hiring boom, raising questions about what truly happened.

Below is a reverse-chronological list of major tech companies announcing large-scale layoffs in 2026, citing AI as a core driver.

Oracle — June 22, 2026

Oracle disclosed in late June that it had laid off 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a 13% reduction—meaning actual layoffs were higher than previously known, including AI-driven cuts. "The adoption and deployment of AI technologies in our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in workforce reductions," the company wrote in its annual financial regulatory filing.

GitLab — June 3, 2026

GitLab laid off approximately 350 employees, about 14% of its workforce, to fund AI infrastructure investments and handle surging traffic from AI workflows.

CEO Bill Staples stated that agent-driven workloads are "pushing competitors to the brink," prompting the company to initiate a "generational rebuild" of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth demands. GitLab will exit 22 countries, flatten management hierarchies, and partner with an unnamed 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 restructuring costs of $30–35 million.

Google — Through May

Alphabet's Google quietly laid off employees in its Cloud division, including Threat Intelligence Group and cybersecurity personnel linked to Mandiant—even as Cloud revenue surged 63%, surpassing $20 billion for the first time, with backlog orders nearly doubling to over $460 billion.

Over the past year, Google eliminated more than one-third of managers overseeing small teams—a 35% reduction in managers with few direct reports.

Unlike most companies on this list, Google never disclosed a total layoff figure—cuts occurred through rolling performance reviews, voluntary buyouts, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates ranging from 1,500 to 3,000+ engineers in 2026.

Intuit — May 20, 2026

Intuit announced plans to lay off approximately 3,000 employees—about 17% of its workforce—as part of a reorganization focused on "reducing complexity" and reallocating resources to AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told employees the company is simplifying its structure to deliver better products.

Meta — May 20–21, 2026

Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees, about 10% of its workforce, while transferring roughly 7,000 employees to new AI-focused roles (which they reportedly disliked). CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees layoffs were necessary because success in AI "is not guaranteed."

Cisco — May 14, 2026

Cisco announced nearly 4,000 layoffs, about 5% of its workforce, despite better-than-expected profits and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson stated, "This really isn't a cost-saving-driven reorganization... This is more about reallocating resources to chips, optics, security, and AI."

General Motors — May 12, 2026

GM cut 500–600 IT jobs in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, citing a reassessment of labor needs amid uncertain market conditions. A source familiar with the layoffs told CNBC that AI played a role in decision-making but was not the sole factor.

GM stated it is "transforming its information technology organization to better position the company for the future." Despite layoffs, the company still has about 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, racing, and autonomous vehicles.

Cloudflare — May 7–8, 2026

Cloudflare laid off about 20% of its workforce (1,100 employees) while reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year—the highest single-quarter revenue in company history.

CEO Matthew Prince wrote, "The vast majority of people we let go last week were 'measurers'"—mid-level management, finance, legal, internal audit, and revenue recognition personnel.

Coinbase — May 5, 2026

The cryptocurrency exchange announced layoffs of approximately 700 employees, about 14% of its workforce, as part of a reorganization to address market volatility and improve AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to just five levels below the CEO and COO and stated it would experiment with "one-person teams"—combining engineering, design, and product roles.

CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI has drastically altered work pace—"Engineers use AI to accomplish in days what used to take a team weeks"—and the company needs to "leverage AI in every aspect of work."

PayPal — May 5, 2026

PayPal announced plans to lay off approximately 20% of its workforce—over 4,500 jobs—over the next two to three years as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification.

CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company will "aggressively adopt AI" in development processes and formed a new "AI Transformation & Simplification" team reporting directly to the CEO, tasked with redesigning company processes "by function."

Lores defined layoffs as removing organizational layers and stated AI will extend far beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.

Microsoft — April–May 2026

Microsoft offered structured voluntary buyouts but did not disclose how many employees would be affected. CFO Amy Hood stated that total headcount declined year-over-year in the third fiscal quarter and expected further declines as the company focused on "building high-performing teams that operate with speed and agility" amid increasing AI investments.

Snap — April 16, 2026

Snap laid off approximately 16% of its global workforce—about 1,000 full-time employees—and closed over 300 open positions, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. "The rapid progress of artificial intelligence has enabled our team to reduce repetitive work, increase speed, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers," Spiegel wrote in an SEC filing. The company stated it has seen small teams using AI tools make progress on Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency.

IBM — Ongoing Throughout 2026

From Q4 2025 layoffs to April 2026 cuts in Red Hat's engineering division, an estimated 3,000–9,000 U.S. jobs have been cut, bringing IBM's total layoffs since September 2024 to over 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple entry-level hiring for U.S. AI and hybrid cloud roles, even as about 200 HR jobs were replaced by AI agents.

An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 layoffs as a routine rebalancing affecting "a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce."

Atlassian — March 11, 2026

Atlassian laid off approximately 1,600 employees (10% of its workforce) to "rebalance" toward AI and enterprise sales—news that sent its stock price up nearly 2%. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes stated, "Our approach isn't 'AI replaces people.' But it would be dishonest to pretend AI isn't changing the skill sets we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It is."

Dell — January 30, 2026 (Disclosed in March)

Dell's total workforce declined by about 10% in FY2026—approximately 11,000 jobs—from 108,000 a year earlier, with severance expenditures reaching $569 million. Layoffs occurred as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in FY2027.

Oracle — March 5–31, 2026

As noted above, Oracle began notifying employees via terminal emails of thousands of layoffs.

Layoffs coincided with Oracle reporting quarterly net income of $3.7 billion, up 27% year-over-year, and remaining performance obligations surging 325% to $553 billion—with savings reinvested in AI data centers. These layoffs totaled 21,000 over the following 12 months, as disclosed in Oracle's June 22 annual filing.

Block — February 26–27, 2026

Jack Dorsey's Block laid off 4,000 employees—nearly half its workforce, reducing from over 10,000 to about 6,000. Dorsey wrote on X, "We've seen that the intelligent tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller, flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working that fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company." He added, "I think most companies are behind. Within the next year, I believe most companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes."

Salesforce — February 10, 2026

Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees in marketing, product management, data analysis, and its Agentforce AI division.

The company told Fortune, "Due to the benefits and efficiency gained from the intelligent workforce, the volume of supportive work we handle has declined, and we no longer need to actively fill supportive engineer roles." This followed prior cuts of about 4,000 customer support jobs, reducing that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000. CEO Marc Benioff stated the company needs "fewer heads" as AI agents handle the work.

Amazon — January 28, 2026

Amazon laid off 16,000 corporate employees, following 14,000 layoffs in October 2025—cutting about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months.

The company called this part of "strengthening our organization by reducing layers, increasing autonomy, and removing bureaucracy."

CEO Andy Jassy stated in June 2025, "As we launch more generative AI and agents, this should change how we work. Over the next few years, we expect this to reduce our total corporate headcount as we gain efficiency improvements from widespread AI use across the company."

Behind the Numbers

So far in 2026, the tech industry has laid off approximately 120,000 workers. Every company on this list is generating record revenues while citing AI as a reason for layoffs.

Contradictory? Not really.

This is the most absurd yet real picture of the 2026 tech industry: AI serves as both a growth engine and a replacement for human labor. Companies don't need to choose between "growth" and "layoffs"—they want both.

The only question is: Where do the laid-off workers go?

This article is adapted from TechCrunch, originally published on July 6, 2026. Original link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/06/the-running-list-major-tech-layoffs-in-2026-where-employers-cited-ai/. It describes the 2026 layoff landscape in Silicon Valley, showing how AI is rewriting the tech industry's workforce structure—"As AI shifts from a growth engine to a layoff justification, we tracked the stated factors of 17 major companies and the real narrative behind 120,000 laid-off jobs."