Monday

Monday.com became the latest company to blame AI for layoffs, with 20 of its peers standing behind it. A work management software company famous for its colorful project boards included "AI" in its reasons for layoffs this week. Tel Aviv-based Monday.com said in an SEC filing on Wednesday that it would lay off about 20% of its workforce, or just over 600 people, as part of a "reorganization plan" that is linked to its "continued transformation of its product, marketing and go-to-market strategies" to support a "leaner, more focused operating model" while the company continues to invest in "AI-driven growth strategies." Co-founder Eran Zinman put it tactfully in a LinkedIn memo: This adjustment is "not about cutting costs or replacing people with AI," but to adapt to the AI-first vision proposed about a year ago. The company, which has two offices in the U.S., expects net restructuring charges of between $45 million and $55 million, but still expects revenue to grow by up to 20% year over year in 2026. Zoom out and Monday.com is just the latest wave in this wave. According to statistics from the Financial Times, U.S. technology companies have laid off nearly 140,000 people so far this year, of which Amazon, Oracle, Meta, and Microsoft account for nearly 50,000, and they are also spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centers. The Financial Times also found an intriguing sign: Companies that cited AI as a reason for layoffs underperformed the Nasdaq by an average of nearly 10% in the 30 trading days following the announcement—and the market wasn’t entirely buying it. It’s not all pessimism. AI-native companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI are hiring quickly; Meta transferred about 7,000 people to AI positions (while laying off 8,000 people); IBM said it has tripled entry-level recruitment in AI and hybrid cloud. Looking back along the timeline, the list of layoffs in major companies with "AI as a public factor" is getting longer and longer. Microsoft laid off about 4,800 people, or 2.1% of its global workforce, on July 9, mostly in the Xbox gaming division - a reset three years after acquiring Activision Blizzard, and the company also provided an undisclosed number of voluntary severance buyouts. The official line is that jobs are "not replaced by AI", but "AI is changing the way work is done." CFO Amy Hood said that the total number of headcount fell year-on-year in the third quarter and is expected to continue to decline. Oracle disclosed on June 22 that it had cut 21,000 jobs in the past 12 months.