Big Tech cut 80,000 jobs and blamed AI — industry experts say CEOs are covering up their mistakes. Who’s right?
When we hear about layoffs by large corporations, our first instinct is often to blame artificial intelligence (AI) — especially when it comes to Big Tech companies.
In Q1 2026, 86 tech companies laid off over 80,000 employees. That’s quite the jump from Q1 2025, when 103 tech companies laid off around 30,000 workers. It’s also the highest number of layoffs in three years. (1)
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The idea that AI is to blame for these job losses didn’t come from nowhere; CEOs are actively citing AI as the cause. In March, AI was claimed to be the leading reason for layoffs in the U.S., making up 25% of all job cuts. In 2026, it’s supposedly the reason behind 13% of all layoffs so far. (2)
But this may not be entirely accurate. A different motivation could be behind job cuts, and perhaps AI is just the scapegoat.
Big Tech is engaging in massive layoffs — and blaming AI
Meta laid off 10% of its staff in May. Three sources on the call told Business Insider that the company said it was open to cutting even more jobs in the future. (3) Microsoft also recently sent workers an internal memo that offered voluntary buyouts. Around seven percent of its employees are eligible for the program. Other tech companies that have cut jobs in 2026 include Eventbrite, Oracle, Quora, and Spotify, to name a few. (1) A lot of companies. A lot of layoffs. And many of these organizations are blaming job cuts on AI. “Almost every company that does layoffs is blaming AI, whether or not it really is about AI,” Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said at BlackRock’s US Infrastructure Summit in March (4). Using AI as an excuse for laying off workers has been referred to as “AI washing.” (5) Some CEOs are at least somewhat honest. “Since it’s a thing now, I should note that the layoffs aren’t related to AI,” Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, said in a March note to his employees that announced the company would cut more than 1,000 jobs. (6)
Don’t panic! Take a breath and add a little perspective
Layoffs are on everyone’s mind, but no one is really explaining what shape these layoffs were going to take. The supreme irony here is that the same workforce that built AI and drove it mainstream are the first ones on the chopping block. It is not how the fearmongers wanted you to believe. There isn’t some android army that is going to replace entire companies’ employees with assembly lines. The truth is much more subtle and more of a graceful shift in the jobs that are actually available and needed. We have created an extremely powerful and versatile tool that is capable of performing complex tasks better and faster than before. But here is the part that no one is talking about. Yes, there are many jobs being cut, but in the very near future – 6 months or less by my estimates – there will be a hiring surge, but the jobs will be new, cutting edge and better paying most likely.
AI is so new and powerful, you can blink and suddenly the API’s you used last week are obsolete
When technology or any industry for that matter moves at that pace, corporations have to take a step back and assess what their needs will be when the dust settles. They can’t just keep paying everyone while they figure out how to structure the new departments and what jobs will be needed. Now for a little perspective, I estimate around 70% of large corporations’ workforce spent their days typing reports, memos, and majority of the coders were just pounding the keys writing line after line of boilerplate code. We no longer need to fill those seats for menial hum drum work. Here is the twist, what we will need now is a trained AI tech that can engineer the meticulous set of instructions to ensure the models perform the tasks correctly and predictable. Sound easy? I can tell you firsthand that it is not. A simple comma can change how a model interprets the instructions, a phrase out of order, the use of “a” instead of an “an”, any combination of phrases that in a conversation between 2 humans wouldn’t raise an eyebrow can send a model in the wrong direction. Which brings us to another swarm of new jobs, highly technical workers that can monitor the models and point them back in the right direction if they stray.
Any change can be scary if you are not given the entire story. Take the time to educate yourself with the truth, not the hype. AI is taking jobs, if you must phrase it that way, but it is also going to usher in an entirely new workforce with new jobs. In my opinion it is going to be an entire shift in the workforce. We are going to lose many of the low paying tedious jobs for higher paying, more demanding technical jobs. The days of working in the fields for pennies is over.
