Monday.com disclosed restructuring plans this week, proposing to lay off approximately 20% of its workforce, affecting more than 600 people. The company linked this restructuring to a transformation of its product, marketing, and sales strategies, and stated that it will continue to advance its AI-driven growth strategy. This makes it the latest tech company to mention AI in its layoff announcement.
The company anticipates the restructuring will result in net charges of $45 million to $55 million. Despite the layoffs, Monday.com still projects revenue growth of up to 20% year-over-year in 2026. In a letter to employees, co-founder Eran Zinman stated that the move is not simply about cost reduction or replacing employees with AI, but rather about aligning with the company's previously stated AI-first strategy.
Tech companies are laying off employees while ramping up their AI investments.
TechCrunch, citing an analysis from the Financial Times, reports that US tech companies have cut nearly 140,000 jobs since the beginning of 2026. Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft account for nearly 50,000 of these job losses. These companies are also investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI data center construction.
The report noted that the market is not entirely convinced by the claim that "AI is causing layoffs." Financial Times statistics show that after companies announced layoffs and cited AI as a factor, their stock prices underperformed the Nasdaq index by an average of nearly 10% in the following 30 trading days.
Many companies are incorporating AI into their layoffs.
Among the companies named, Microsoft cut approximately 4,800 jobs in July, representing about 2.1% of its global workforce. The company stated that these jobs were not directly replaced by AI, but acknowledged that AI is changing the way we work. Oracle, in its annual regulatory filing, disclosed that its total workforce decreased by 21,000 over the past 12 months, a drop of approximately 13%, and explicitly mentioned that the deployment of AI technology has led to, and may continue to lead to, layoffs.
GitLab laid off approximately 350 employees in June, representing about 14% of its total workforce, citing reasons including freeing up resources for AI infrastructure. Intuit announced in May plans to lay off approximately 3,000 employees, about 17% of its total workforce, and to reallocate resources to AI. Cisco, Cloudflare, Meta, and other companies also mentioned AI or the reconfiguration of roles around AI in their layoff announcements.
Notably, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is also on the list. In May, the company announced it would lay off approximately 700 employees, about 14% of its workforce, citing reasons including addressing market volatility and improving AI efficiency. The company also streamlined its management structure and proposed a more streamlined team approach.
Despite layoffs, AI jobs are still expanding.
However, the tech industry isn't experiencing a one-way contraction. The report mentions that AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are still hiring rapidly, absorbing some of the technical talent leaving other companies. Some large tech companies are also simultaneously transferring roles internally, rather than simply reducing their total headcount.
For example, Meta laid off approximately 8,000 people while reassigning about 7,000 to new AI-related roles. IBM also stated that while recently laying off employees, it is expanding its entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid cloud positions.
Overall, AI is driving two changes simultaneously: first, the downsizing of traditional teams and the flattening of organizational structures; and second, the continued concentration of funding and human resources in AI infrastructure, model applications, and related positions. For tech companies, layoffs are no longer just a cost-inducing action, but are increasingly being incorporated into the AI transformation narrative.
