Microsoft said Monday that it has eliminated about 4,800 roles, or 2.1% of its global workforce, adding to the string of AI-related layoffs hitting the tech world. The company said the roles being cut are “not being replaced by AI,” but acknowledged that “AI is changing how work gets done” and automating many everyday tasks.
The cuts continue what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Roughly 120,000 tech roles have now been cut in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, a tracker that has monitored industry layoffs since 2020.
We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the teams they’re now cutting ballooned during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what’s really going on right now. Below is a running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.
Oracle — June 22, 2026. Oracle disclosed in late June that it had reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including because of AI. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing.
GitLab — June 3, 2026. GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company had begun a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified …