Tech giant Workday lays off 1,750 employees in shift to AICEO Carl Eschenbach said the Bay Area-based software firm will be “prioritizing innovation investments like AI and platform development.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/06/workday-layoffs-ai/Workday, the tech giant that sells workforce management software, is laying off about 1,750 employees, CEO Carl Eschenbach said in a Wednesday email that pointed to “increasing demand” for artificial intelligence as having “the potential to drive a new era of growth” for the company.
The layoffs will affect 8.5 percent of the company’s staff around the world. In the memo, Eschenbach said the Bay Area-based firm will be “prioritizing innovation investments like AI and platform development.” Eschenbach urged employees to work from home on Wednesday and said that those laid off in the United States will be offered a minimum of 12 weeks pay with additional weeks determined by tenure.
Workday said it intends to continue hiring in “key strategic areas” throughout its fiscal year and plans to exit some office spaces, according to an SEC filing Wednesday. The Washington Post is a Workday client.
The cuts are the latest in a wave of layoffs sweeping the tech sector in recent years, with leaders at major companies including Amazon, Google, Meta and Intel also turning to staff reductions, sobering an industry where workers could once rely on their pick of jobs. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
Workday’s move echoes those of other corporations that have justified cutting employees to create room for AI. Meta, after cutting thousands of jobs in 2022 and 2023, has recruited talent to boost its AI work and efforts to build the metaverse, The Post reported. Last year, Google cut hundreds of engineering and hardware workers, aiming to focus on AI.
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston last year used similar reasoning to defend layoffs telling the Verge that they made “a really tough decision to let go of a lot of people and then make room for the investments in AI.”
Workday, which was founded in 2005, has a market capitalization of $73 billion. In a recent filing, Workday said total revenue for the third quarter was $2.16 billion, an increase of 15.8 percent from the same period last year. CFO Zane Rowe said the company expects 17 percent growth in subscription revenue during the 2025 fiscal year.
Shares for the company were up more than 6 percent at market close on Wednesday.
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