US tech companies cut 140,000 jobs this year, with AI development being the main reason for layoffs

Glonghui, July 27｜AI is impacting job numbers. According to the Financial Times, since the beginning of this year, U.S. tech companies have cut nearly 140,000 positions. Among them, Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft have together reduced about 50,000 positions. While these companies announced layoffs, they simultaneously invested hundreds of billions of dollars into AI data center construction.The latest company to announce job cuts is Monday.com, a work management software company. In a document submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week, Monday.com stated it would lay off about 20% of its staff (over 600 people) as part of a "restructuring plan" to support the company's ongoing transformation of products, marketing, and go-to-market strategies, aiming to create a leaner and more focused operating model and invest in "AI-driven growth strategies."Other major tech companies that have recently announced layoffs include: Microsoft, which earlier this month announced plans to cut around 4,800 jobs, most of which are from the Xbox division; Oracle, which last month disclosed it had cut 21,000 employees over the past year; and GitLab, which laid off about 350 employees last month. The reasons cited by these companies for the layoffs are all related to AI.However, some tech companies are still actively hiring. For example, Anthropic and OpenAI are recruiting talent laid off by others. Some companies that have made layoffs are redistributing staff rather than eliminating positions entirely. For example, Meta recently laid off 8,000 people but simultaneously reassigned about 7,000 employees to AI-related roles; when IBM carried out layoffs, it also announced that basic positions in AI and hybrid cloud would triple.