Under the influence of the AI wave, Silicon Valley has launched a new round of layoffs: companies such as Salesforce, Google, and Meta have resorted to side cutting tactics, even to the extent of determining layoffs based on code volume, while resources have shifted towards cutting-edge big models; Unicorns and traditional enterprises have also been affected. Grassroots positions are being compressed by automation, and top AI talents are in high demand. Layoffs are not just about reducing costs, but a prelude to reshaping the job landscape.
On a gloomy morning, at a parent-child song event in Salesforce Park, San Francisco, a young father – also a software engineer – was pushing a baby stroller thoughtfully.
A few days ago, he just received a layoff notice from Salesforce, becoming one of the latest round of layoffs for this $240 billion software giant.
At the same time, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is publicly praising how artificial intelligence can improve productivity.
In the past two days, Meta’s super intelligent laboratory has laid off 600 people, and there are reports that the company is so crude that it uses code volume to determine the layoff list.
In Silicon Valley in 2025, the AI wave is sweeping the technology industry in an unprecedented way, driving innovation on one hand and triggering a wave of layoffs on the other.
01
Layoffs continue to occur one after another
AI becomes the driving force behind the scenes
According to the independent layoff tracking website Layoffs.fyi, the number of layoffs in the global technology industry will exceed 150000 in 2024.
Entering 2025, this wave of layoffs is still ongoing.
This year, global technology companies have cut nearly 100000 jobs, with the popularity of artificial intelligence and economic uncertainty being the main drivers.
In April of this year, there was a shocking scene of cutting more than 24500 people in a single month.
Silicon Valley, the global innovation engine, bears the brunt. From Internet giants to start-ups, they have tightened their belts and reshaped their organizations to adapt to the AI era.
The series of actions taken by large technology companies are particularly eye-catching.
At the beginning of the year, Google announced a restructuring of its organizational structure, offering voluntary resignation plans in its “personnel operations” and cloud departments. Additionally, in October, it cut over 100 design positions in its cloud department and redirected resources towards AI product development.
Meta has also made several moves: at the beginning of the year, it eliminated 5% of “underperformers” through performance evaluations, then reduced the Reality Labs team by about 100 positions in the spring, and in the fall, it was announced that about 600 employees in the AI infrastructure department would be laid off.
However, it is worth noting that the top AI team at TBD Labs, led by Meta’s new Chief AI Officer, Alexandre Wang, has not been affected. While cutting back on old businesses, Meta is still thirsty for cutting-edge AI talent.
Salesforce has become a microcosm of the wave of AI layoffs in Silicon Valley.
This customer relationship management software giant had already laid off about 8000 employees as early as 2023, and another 1000 employees in 2024.
Entering 2025, Salesforce announced another layoff of 262 employees at its San Francisco headquarters.
Benioff’s high-profile promotion that artificial intelligence will “dramatically reshape work” while bidding farewell to thousands of employees has sparked widespread lamentation about the cultural upheaval in Silicon Valley.
02
The AI Revolution
Tech giants recruit while laying off employees
Silicon Valley giants have not slowed down their investment and recruitment in the AI field while laying off employees.
Behind this dramatic scene of “cutting while recruiting” is the difficult balance between old and new positions for enterprises.
Senior executives of companies such as Microsoft and Amazon have recently expressed their views on AI replacing some human labor, which has attracted widespread attention.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote to employees in July this year, admitting that the pain caused by layoffs in order to transform the company from a “software factory” to an intelligent engine was making him “restless”.
After a small-scale layoff at the beginning of the year, this tech giant also cut over 6500 positions in May, accounting for about 3% of its global workforce, making it the largest contraction measure since cutting 10000 jobs in 2023.
Nadella stated that this adjustment is aimed at investing more resources in developing cutting-edge fields such as generative AI products (such as Copilot) and Azure cloud services.
Meanwhile, Amazon has laid off approximately 27000 employees since 2022.
CEO Andy Jassy warned employees in June that as artificial intelligence penetrates business processes, many job positions in the company will no longer require as much manual labor in the future.
This autumn, Amazon continued to take action against its departments: first, it restructured its audio content subsidiary Wondery, cutting 100 positions, and merged its podcast business into Audible;
Subsequently, about 100 people were laid off in the Devices and Services department (covering teams such as Alexa voice assistants, Echo speakers, and Zoox autonomous driving).
These measures are seen as a strategic adjustment by Amazon to focus on core business, reduce redundancy, and free up space for AI projects.
Even Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, has felt the pressure of AI transformation.
In the middle of this year, Google cut a quarter of the team in its smart TV division and prioritized funding for AI projects.
In the October layoffs, the design and user experience team of Google’s cloud division was the first to bear the brunt, with over 100 designers laid off. It is reported that this is precisely because the company wants to further transform its cloud business towards AI driven products.
Correspondingly, Google is vigorously promoting AI research talents internally and has announced plans to increase investment in the field of generative AI.
Within these giant companies, we see a clear trend: traditional positions and middle management positions are being reduced, while top AI scientists, engineers, and product managers are becoming increasingly popular.
Old established companies such as Oracle and Cisco are also following closely behind.
Oracle laid off hundreds of employees in the Bay Area in August and September, including 101 in Seattle, 254 in San Francisco, and 101 in Santa Clara. Despite remaining silent to the public, the actions were frequent.
Cisco has cut a total of 221 positions in its San Jose and San Francisco offices in California.
Although these companies do not directly attribute layoffs to AI, their layoffs often occur in basic research and development or support departments in order to free up budget for areas highly related to AI, such as cloud services and network security.
It is worth noting that Salesforce is actively recruiting business talents who can sell new AI products while laying off some employees.
From these seemingly contradictory arrangements, it is not difficult to read the bets of large technology companies on the future direction: using AI to improve efficiency, opening up new markets with AI, and arming teams with AI.
03
Startup and Unicorn
Reshaping oneself in the torrent of AI
The layoff storm is not limited to tech giants.
In 2025, many startups and unicorn companies will also be forced to turn the tide of AI and achieve business focus and strategic transformation through layoffs.
In August, Fiverr, a star startup in the freelance service market, announced about 250 layoffs, accounting for 30% of its total workforce. The CEO stated in a letter to employees that this move is aimed at making the company “more streamlined, agile, and focused on AI first development”. After the restructuring, the management hierarchy will be reduced, and efforts will be made to build an “AI native” product and service system.
Almost simultaneously, Yotpo, a marketing technology company headquartered in Israel, also cut 34% of its team (about 200 people), shut down email and SMS marketing businesses, and instead partnered with other companies to provide these services, concentrating resources on developing AI driven new tools such as automatic comment summarization, intelligent content sorting, etc.
The two Israeli “unicorns” coincidentally sought change through layoffs, announcing the decline of the traditional Internet business model and gambling on the prospects of AI.
In the United States, the merged job search platform giants Indeed and Glassdoor announced in July that they will lay off a total of 1300 positions and carry out deep integration.
The CEO of Recruit Holdings, the Japanese parent company, explained that this restructuring is aimed at reshaping business processes, focusing on AI, and integrating resources from the two recruitment platforms to better utilize AI to improve recruitment matching efficiency.
Obviously, even the recruitment industry itself is inevitably shaken by AI: intelligent tools such as optimized algorithm matching and automatic resume screening are reducing the need for manual recruitment coordination.
Some companies in the AI field themselves have not been spared from the impact of layoffs in the face of industry competition and strategic adjustments.
This summer, Silicon Valley data annotation unicorn Scale AI announced the layoff of about 200 employees and terminated the cooperation of 500 global contract workers.
Remarkably, just a few months ago, the founder of Scale AI sold the company to Meta, a $14.3 billion acquisition aimed at bringing the startup star to Meta as an executive.
As soon as the aftermath of the acquisition settled, Scale underwent a massive downsizing, perhaps to optimize its book expenses before merging into the social giant.
A similar scene also occurred in Elon Musk’s recently founded xAI: According to reports, this startup focused on general artificial intelligence cut about 500 data annotators, equivalent to one-third of its team, in its debut as part of the layoffs.
XAI stated that these laid-off “general AI trainer” positions will be replaced by “AI experts” from various fields, and the company will shift the training of chatbots towards a more professional direction.
For a time, AI companies that once pursued large-scale manual annotation of data began to replace manual labor with more intelligent AI methods, which is deeply regrettable.
The adjustment of AI startups is either due to strategic focus or survival pressure.
Gupshup, a conversational AI startup based in San Francisco, carried out two rounds of layoffs this year: cutting about 200 employees in April and at least 100 more in October, affecting nearly half of its workforce.
Despite relying on investors such as Tiger Global Fund and reaching a valuation of $1.4 billion at one point, the company still had to streamline its team to improve efficiency and profitability, while preparing for an IPO.
Windsurf, another Bay Area startup specializing in AI code generation, also laid off 30 employees shortly after being acquired by Cognition and offered a voluntary buyout plan for the remaining 200 employees.
This was once rumored to be a star team that OpenAI and Google were vying to acquire, but in the end, due to the departure of core talents after the acquisition and the new owner’s emphasis on intellectual property, people’s hearts were in turmoil, and layoffs were almost certain.
From this, it can be seen that even the most glamorous AI startups may be forced to survive through layoffs under the pressure of capital and giants.
04
Traditional industries and new startups
The inevitable chill
It is worth noting that the wave of layoffs has gone beyond the fields of pure software and the Internet, and affected the technology departments and cross-border technology enterprises in traditional industries.
In March of this year, American chain coffee giant Starbucks announced the layoff of 1100 technical employees and instead outsourced some technical functions to third parties.
A coffee selling company has also accumulated a large technical team. This adjustment is not only a cost consideration, but also reflects that as digital transformation enters a new stage, some internal IT positions are being replaced by more efficient external services or AI tools.
The automotive industry has also felt the chill: General Motors (GM) has laid off 200 employees at its Detroit electric vehicle factory, attributed to a slowdown in the growth of the electric vehicle market;
Rivian, a rising star in the electric vehicle industry, has announced three layoffs. After cutting nearly 300 employees in June and September, it announced another 600 job cuts (about 4% of its workforce) in October to cope with changes in industry subsidy policies and cooling demand.
Even Intel, which has always been steady, no longer hesitates to “slim down for the winter”. This chip giant announced in April that it will lay off up to 20% of its employees (about 21000 people) in the future, focusing on its foundry services department to cut costs and focus on AI chip manufacturing.
In April, German industrial giant Siemens announced that it would lay off approximately 5600 employees globally, mainly focusing on automation and electric vehicle charging related businesses to enhance competitiveness.
Silicon Valley’s unicorns are also re examining the balance between growth and profitability.
Turo, a ride sharing platform, has decided to lay off 150 employees to strengthen its financial resilience after canceling its IPO plan;
Smartsheet, an enterprise collaboration software company, laid off over 120 employees immediately after being privatized and acquired, in preparation for management adjustments;
The enterprise human resources platform Workday has unusually laid off 1750 employees (8.5%), despite its stable performance in recent years, choosing to proactively reduce expenses.
Cruise, a once glorious autonomous driving company, ultimately chose to disband half of its employees and shut down its operations after experiencing several safety accidents and regulatory pressures, and its remaining assets were acquired by its parent company General Motors.
This team, once seen as a hope for future travel, came to a dramatic end, causing countless tech professionals to engage in complex thinking about the future.
05
The cost and hope of human beings
The Two Sides of the ‘AI Revolution’
When we sort out the tumultuous layoffs of the past year, it is not difficult to find a consistent thread: AI is profoundly changing the talent landscape of Silicon Valley and the global technology industry.
In the eyes of many corporate executives, AI means efficiency, innovation, and competitiveness, meaning that more can be done with fewer people.
However, for laid-off employees, AI means job displacement and uncertain prospects.
Stanford University economist Erik Brynjolfsson succinctly explains the paradox:
The development of artificial intelligence is always accompanied by the destruction and creation of job opportunities.
In technology companies, these two phenomena are happening simultaneously – the demand for grassroots positions is declining, while the demand for high skilled talents such as AI experts is soaring.
The wave of layoffs in Silicon Valley in 2025 is a true portrayal of this “creation and destruction” landscape.
In May of this year, American educational technology company Chegg had to lay off over 200 employees, accounting for 22% of its total workforce, due to a business setback caused by a large number of students turning to AI tools such as ChatGPT;
Canva, who had encouraged employees to boldly use generative AI, fired more than ten technical document writers nine months later – positions that may have long been replaced by AI writing assistants.
On the other hand, the AI wave itself is also fueling a new thirst for talent.
Enterprises are competing for emerging roles such as machine learning engineers, prompt experts, and data scientists, offering high salaries to attract them, fearing to fall behind in this arms race.
IBM abandoned 200 human recruitment specialists and replaced them with chatbots, but achieved an increase in the total number of employees through business transformation.
As pointed out by industry reviews:
The wave of layoffs in 2025 reveals not only the decision of companies to cut costs, but also a precursor to how AI can reshape the future work landscape.
An unavoidable reality for both companies and individuals is that AI is becoming a core factor in restructuring job positions.
For enterprises, having AI means being able to reshape processes, streamline teams, or create new businesses;
For employees, embracing AI and mastering new skills may have become the survival rules to continue to stand firm.
Looking ahead to the future, we may have to confront the question that the ultimate measure of technological progress is not only how much value is created, but also how many people have gained opportunities and how many have paid the price for it.
As more and more companies replace manual labor with AI, the livelihood gains and losses hanging in between will eventually become the yardstick for measuring the cost of this technological transformation.
Reference materials:
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/24/tech-layoffs-2025-list/
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