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Global tech companies have been on a layoff spree in 2026, and the numbers are staggering.
As of July 2026, the 10 largest technology layoffs announced globally have affected more than 76,000 workers, as some of the world’s biggest tech companies restructure their operations.
AI is among the most frequently cited reasons for the layoffs.
Companies that spent the last five years racing to hire engineers, product managers and data scientists are now racing in the opposite direction, arguing that the same AI systems they are building can do the work those engineers were hired to do.
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The argument has, however, drawn criticism. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called out what he terms “AI washing”, a term that means companies are dressing up financially-motivated layoffs in the language of automation.
Some of the companies on this list cut staff while reporting record revenue. But whether the cause is genuine AI displacement, capital reallocation, post-pandemic correction, or some combination of all three, the effect on tens of thousands of people is the same.
In this report, Nairametrics ranks the ten biggest tech layoffs of 2026 so far, based on verified figures drawn from official SEC filings, company announcements, and other reporting.
10. Cloudflare — 1,100 employees (20% of workforce)
On May 7, 2026, Cloudflare announced that it was reducing its workforce by more than 1,100 employees globally.
The cuts represented about 20% of the company’s entire global workforce. The layoffs came despite Cloudflare reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million in the same period, up 34% year-over-year.
The reason given was strategic reorientation toward AI-native infrastructure.
9. Atlassian — 1,600 employees (10% of workforce)
Atlassian, the software company behind Jira and Confluence, cut approximately 1,600 employees, representing 10% of its global workforce, on March 11, 2026.
CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes framed the decision with unusual directness: “It would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas.”
The company said the capital freed by the cuts would be redirected toward artificial intelligence development and enterprise sales.
8. Intuit — 3,000 employees (17% of workforce)
Intuit, the company behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs, about 17% of its global workforce, on May 20, 2026.
CEO Sasan Goodarzi told staff the cuts were aimed at reducing organizational complexity and simplifying the company’s structure so it could deliver better products and improve execution.
He stated that the decision had nothing to do with AI replacing workers.
Analysts and media still linked the restructuring to Intuit’s broader push into artificial intelligence, but the company itself framed it as an operational simplification.
The 17% reduction ranked among the more aggressive single-announcement cuts by a major software firm in 2026.
7. Cisco — 4,000 employees (5% of workforce)
Cisco, the networking and communications infrastructure giant, cut 4,000 employees, representing about 5% of its workforce, in May 2026.
What makes the Cisco layoff particularly notable is the context in which it happened: the company simultaneously reported record revenue of $15.8 billion in its fiscal third quarter, a 12% increase year-over-year.
CEO Chuck Robbins did not attribute the cuts to financial distress. “This was really not a savings-driven restructure,” CFO Mark Patterson said. “This is more [about] realigning resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.”
The cuts at a company in record financial health underscored how thoroughly the 2026 layoff wave was being driven by strategic realignment rather than revenue pressure.
6. Microsoft — 4,800 employees (approximately 2.1% of workforce)
Microsoft’s mid-year layoffs targeted approximately 4,800 roles across the company, with the Xbox gaming division bearing the heaviest impact.
Xbox chief Asha Sharma confirmed in a post on X that 3,200 roles would be cut through fiscal year 2027, with 1,600 of those eliminated on July 6, 2026.
- In a memo explaining the cuts, Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, wrote: “The roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI.”
The statement was significant because it pushed back against claims that the layoffs were directly caused by AI replacing employees.
Microsoft’s chief financial officer Amy Hood noted that total headcount had declined year-over-year and was expected to keep declining as the company focuses resources on AI infrastructure.
5. Block — more than 4,000 employees (40% of workforce)
By raw numbers, Block’s layoffs on February 26, 2026, rank fifth on this list. However, by percentage of workforce eliminated in a single day, they are the most dramatic cut any major tech company has made in years.
Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder and CEO, announced the company would cut more than 4,000 employees, approximately 40% of its global headcount, taking it from over 10,000 workers to just under 6,000. Block owns Square, Cash App and Afterpay.
Dorsey’s stated reason was explicit and sweeping. In a letter to shareholders and a post on X, he explained that the company’s decision to reduce its workforce was not driven by financial pressure.
Dorsey said Block’s business remains strong, with gross profit continuing to grow, customer numbers increasing and profitability improving, but argued that AI-powered tools are changing the structure of work inside companies.
4. Meta — 10,200 employees (across multiple waves in 2026)
Meta’s 2026 workforce reduction came in three documented waves. In January, the company cut approximately 1,000 to 1,500 employees from its Reality Labs division (roughly 10% of that unit), and shut down several VR game studios, slashing the Reality Labs budget by 30%.
In March, a further 700 employees were cut across at least five divisions, including sales and recruiting.
On May 20, 2026, the largest wave arrived: Meta began notifying approximately 8,000 employees that they were being laid off, with Singapore-based workers informed first at 4 a.m. local time, followed by UK and US employees as their mornings began.
The May cuts amounted to roughly 10% of Meta’s workforce of just under 80,000 employees. CEO Mark Zuckerberg had signalled the direction on Meta’s January earnings call, calling 2026 “the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work.”
3. Dell Technologies — 11,000 employees (approximately 10% of workforce)
Dell’s 2026 layoffs did not come with a press conference. They came with a 10-K filing.
The company’s annual report, published in March 2026, confirmed that headcount fell by approximately 11,000 employees in fiscal year 2026, from 108,000 to 97,000, representing a 10.2% reduction.
Severance costs totaled $569 million.
What makes Dell’s cuts particularly striking in context is their consistency. This was the third consecutive year in which Dell’s workforce shrank by approximately 10%.
2. Amazon — 16,000 employees (approximately 9% of corporate workforce)
On January 28, 2026, Amazon announced it was laying off 16,000 employees. This was the company’s second major wave of layoffs in four months, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025.
Combined, the two rounds eliminated approximately 30,000 corporate positions, the largest workforce reduction in Amazon’s three-decade history, surpassing the 27,000 cuts made during its 2022–2023 post-pandemic correction.
Amazon employs approximately 1.58 million people in total, but the vast majority are in fulfilment centre and delivery operations; these cuts targeted corporate roles, representing approximately 9% of that corporate workforce.
CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that efficiency gains from AI would likely cause Amazon’s corporate headcount to fall in coming years.
1. Oracle — 21,000 employees (approximately 13% of global workforce)
- When: March 31, 2026 (primary event); disclosed in annual SEC filing June 22, 2026
On the morning of March 31, 2026, thousands of Oracle employees across the United States, India, Canada, Mexico and Uruguay opened their email to find a message from “Oracle Leadership” confirming their role had been cut, effective immediately.
The scale became officially clear on June 22, when Oracle filed its annual report with the SEC. The company ended fiscal year 2026, which ran to May 31, 2026, with approximately 141,000 employees, down from 162,000 a year earlier.
That is a reduction of 21,000 people, or roughly 13% of its global workforce. Restructuring costs came to $1.84 billion in severance and other exit payments, compared with $374 million in the prior fiscal year, a near-five-fold increase.
The SEC filing’s most significant detail was not the number. It was the explanation. Oracle told the Securities and Exchange Commission directly: “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce.”
It was among the clearest admissions by a major technology company in 2026 that AI adoption was contributing to workforce reductions.
