It seems that vendors have a new ready-made justification for downsizing in 2025 in the form of AI.
According to layoffs.fyi, some 83,000 tech employees have been laid off this year so far.
That’s far fewer than in 2024 (153,000), 2023 (264,000) and 2022 (165,000), even proportionately.
Despite this, big names such as Microsoft and Intel continue to make hefty headcount cutbacks.
And in contrast to previous years, it’s often AI that’s cited as a key reason for the cuts.
Jobs are being lost as vendors turn to AI to boost efficiencies, or redirect resources into boosting their AI offering for customers.
Here we round up six vendor giants that have laid staff off in 2025 and blamed it on AI (in reverse order of severity).
6. IBM
Roles cut: 200
Why: AI agents replacing HR workers
IBM has used AI agents to replace the work of a “couple of hundred” HR workers, CEO Arvind Krishna told Wall Street Journal in May.
Reinforcing the hotly disupted theory that AI will give with one hand what it takes with the other, Big Blue has as a result hired more programmers and salespeople, Krishna went on to say, however.
“While we have done a huge amount of work inside IBM on leveraging AI and automation on certain enterprise workflows, our total employment has actually gone up, because what it does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas,” he said in the report.
See next page for 5 more AI-related vendor downsizing moves…
