AI Layoff Wave Continues, Monday.com Becomes the Latest Case
This week, Monday.com announced in an SEC filing that it would cut about 600 jobs, or 20% of its total workforce. The Tel Aviv-headquartered company, known for its colorful, drag-and-drop project boards, had co-founder Eran Zinman go out of his way in an internal LinkedIn note to employees to stress that the layoffs are "not about cutting costs, and not about replacing people with AI" — rather, the company is framing it as a continuation of the "AI-first" direction it set a year ago. On the financial reporting side, the restructuring is expected to generate charges of $45 million to $55 million, while the company is still maintaining guidance for up to 20% year-over-year revenue growth in 2026.
What caught my attention about this story is that it puts back on the table something that's been happening over the past six months: the word "AI" shows up more and more often in layoff announcements, yet companies almost never admit that AI is what actually eliminated the jobs. The language is always "transformation," "refocusing," "flattening the org." Monday.com is just the latest name added to that list.
What the FT's Numbers Are Really Telling Us
This TechCrunch piece cites a Financial Times analysis: since the start of 2026, U.S. tech companies have collectively cut nearly 140,000 jobs for AI-related reasons. Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft alone account for roughly 50,000 of those. Notably, these same four companies are also among the biggest spenders on AI data centers — layoffs and expanded AI investment are showing up in the same financial reporting periods.
An even more telling number the FT dug up: companies that attributed their layoffs to AI underperformed the Nasdaq by nearly 10% on average in the 30 trading days following their announcements. In other words, the capital markets are discounting the "we're using AI to optimize the organization" narrative rather than buying into it. There's a real gap between the story companies tell and what investors actually believe.
How I Read Announcements Like This
I use AI tools every day to write code and produce content, so I don't have a knee-jerk objection to the idea that AI is shrinking teams — efficiency genuinely is changing. But after seeing enough of these announcements, I've come to think it's worth separating them into two distinct things: one is a company that wants to cut costs financially but doesn't want that read as "we're laying people off because performance is bad," so it reaches for "AI-first" as a defensible public explanation; the other is job demand that has genuinely shrunk because the tools have changed. These two things are often packaged into the same PR talking point, but they're worth judging separately as a reader — especially when restructuring charges, revenue guidance, and the phrase "AI-first" all show up together in the same filing.
For those of us who work with AI tools every day, news like this doesn't need to trigger anxiety — if anything, it's a reminder: instead of trying to guess which company will announce layoffs next, it's more useful to focus on whether you can actually turn these tools into real output. That's the one part of this whole picture that's still entirely up to you.
Sources
This content was compiled and generated with AI assistance, based on public reporting and primary-source information. For specific figures, financial reporting details, and policy specifics, please refer to each company's official disclosures and the original reporting.