AI Layoffs In 2025 Reached 50,000 Mark: Four Tech Giants That Cited AI As A Reason

This year, we got to see some of the biggest and most brutal layoff drives all over the globe. From tech giants to small firms, most of the entities blamed AI or investment in AI as a major reason behind the job cuts. According to the data shared in a research by Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, the number of layoffs this year reached 54,883, marking one of the biggest layoff numbers in the tech industry. However, some of the experts have a different point of view on the whole scenario. Assistant professor of AI at the Oxfor Internet Institute, Fabian Stephany, said to CNBC that a lot of companies over hired during the pandemic and are now using AI as an excuse to layoff people. On that note, here are the four companies that have downsized on a large

scale this year.Microsoft: Microsoft removed around 15,000 people from active roles this year. The company asked all its remaining employees to use AI as a part of their job role instead of treating it as an optional tool. What's more is that the performance reviews related to the same will also be calculated using AI for the metrics. IBM: IBM CEO Arvind Krishna also said that the chatbots at the company have replaced a lot of HR roles. The company also downsized in communications and marketing. As said by IBM, they are only hiring in the fields that require deeper critical thinking like marketing, sales, and engineering. Salesforce: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff accepted that Salesforce has removed around 4000 roles from the customer support department to boost AI automation. The company relies on an omnichannel supervisor system that establishes coordination between human and AI agents, letting AI recognise when tasks require human intervention. Amazon: Amazon stripped more than 14000 people from their roles this year. Senior Vice President of people experience and technology at Amazon, Beth Galetti, said that the company is going through organizational changes and they will be removing more people in the future.