Tech Layoffs Outpace 2025 As Big Companies Shift Spending To AI
Tech layoffs in 2026 are outpacing last year’s tempo, but they are coming in sharp bursts rather than a steady stream, according to Crunchbase’s Tech Layoff Tracker, which monitors U.S. tech employers cutting jobs.
From January through August U.S. tech layoffs reached at least 94,046, up 16.8% from 80,486 in the same period of 2025. Interestingly, and unsurprisingly, many of the cuts came as tech companies redirected spending toward AI and restructured operations to reduce costs.
The year started off on a busy note on the layoff front. After job cuts dropped sharply in December 2025 to 5,151, they surged in January to over 20,000. May was particularly brutal. The month drove the year-to-date increase, recording 31,513 layoffs — including Meta’s 8,000-job reduction — the highest monthly count since March 2023, when layoffs reached 36,602.
Recent months indicate a slowdown. Layoffs fell each month after May, reaching 2,347 in August. Overall, June-August 2026 layoffs totaled 19,331, down 16.2% year over year. The decline suggests recent easing, though it is too early to establish a lasting reversal.
Artificial intelligence has become a much more common explanation for layoff decisions, noted Roger Lee, founder of Layoffs.fyi. AI was cited in 33% of tech layoff events this year, up from just 1% in 2024. His tracker attributes 92,913 layoffs globally, or 72% of this year’s total, to AI.
“There’s been little evidence that AI is actually replacing the work of the human employees let go,” Lee said of this year’s largest AI-attributed layoffs. He believes established tech companies are spending heavily on AI and cutting costs elsewhere, hoping to increase productivity with smaller workforces.
Companies cutting
This year, we’ve seen a number of Big Tech and publicly traded companies, as well as startups, make deep cuts.
But interestingly, as with last year, public tech companies have dominated layoff headlines in 2026 so far, led by Amazon and Meta.
“Big companies [have] made up about 87% of everyone laid off in 2026, which is similar to last year, when they made up 85%,” Lee said.
Amazon accounted for 17,388 cuts this year so far through August. Those included a 16,000-worker RIF announcement in January and several smaller subsequent rounds. Meta was next with 10,400 layoffs, including an 8,000-job reduction carried out in May that represented 10% of its workforce.
Microsoft and PayPal recorded the next-largest totals, letting go of 4,800 and 4,760 employees, respectively. Block, Cisco and Cognizant each recorded 4,000 layoffs, followed by Intuit with 3,000, Amdocs with 2,900 and Visa with 2,600. Notably, the Top 10 list spans a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, social media, payments and enterprise technology.
We should also note that according to reports, Oracle’s workforce fell by about 21,000 employees in its fiscal year ended May 31, 2026, but the worker count and exact timing for each of those reported cuts was unclear, so we did not include that total in our tracker.
Among privately held companies in the tracker, Epic Games recorded the largest disclosed total at 1,000, followed by HR software provider UKG with 950 and MyHeritage with 500. Those figures were substantially smaller than the largest public-company reductions, although undisclosed layoff counts limit comparisons between the two groups.
And in early September, Uber reportedly laid off 3,300 workers, or 10% of its workforce.
An AI focus
Andrew Challenger, of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says AI is affecting jobs in two ways. Some work, including coding, can now be done with fewer people. “There are jobs that are literally being replaced by artificial intelligence,” he told Crunchbase News.
But companies are also changing their priorities. They’re putting more money into AI and cutting teams working on other parts of the business. “They’re letting people go from one area of their organization while they might even be hiring in an area that is focused on AI,” Challenger said. That’s why a company may lay people off and advertise new jobs at the same time.
Tech has announced more job cuts than any other industry this year, Challenger said. Across the U.S. economy, layoffs are down somewhat from last year, though that comparison is skewed by the large number of federal job cuts in 2025. When compared with the period just after the pandemic, when employers struggled to find workers, layoffs remain elevated.
Few companies outside tech have blamed job cuts on AI so far, Challenger said.
It’s not all negative though, in his view. There’s potential upside for programmers, he said. If AI makes software less expensive to build, companies in other industries might embark on projects they couldn’t afford before. That could mean new jobs outside tech, though it’s too early to know whether those jobs will make up for the ones being cut.
Also, it appears that some companies might be regretting their layoff decisions. Amazon is reaching out to eligible former employees about open roles across the company, including in its cloud-computing and AI businesses, according to a Business Insider report.
Methodology
Layoffs figures are from The Crunchbase Tech Layoffs Tracker, where we record reported job cuts at U.S. tech employers. The tracker includes layoffs conducted by U.S.-based companies or those with a strong U.S. presence — both privately and publicly traded — and is updated at least bi-weekly. Layoff and workforce figures are best estimates based on reporting. Actual layoff figures are likely much higher than reported as many companies do not disclose the number of jobs cut when announcing layoffs. For more about our methodology for tracking layoffs, refer to the tracker’s methodology section.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
