The first quarter of 2026 has been brutal for tech workers as some of the biggest names in technology industry have either announced mass layoffs or are planning them. In any case, the numbers are staggering. While the UK-based research firm RationalFX has said that more than 45,000 jobs have been cut across the tech industry since January, layoff tracker layoffs.fyi has claimed that 66 tech companies have laid off 39,482 employees in the first three months of 2026.“In 2025, automation, artificial intelligence, and sustained cost-discipline measures drove much of the downsizing, with entire departments restructured or eliminated in favour of leaner, AI-assisted workflows. This trend has continued full steam into 2026,” said Alan Cohen, analyst at RationalFX. Here is a breakdown of some of the biggest tech companies that have either cut or plan to cut jobs.
Amazon has cut 16,000 corporate jobs
Amazon kicked off the year with a sweeping round of layoffs in January. The e-commerce giant cut 16,000 corporate employees as part of a broader restructuring aimed at streamlining operations and a ramp-up in AI investment. In total, the e-commerce and cloud giant has shed close to 30,000 corporate roles in just three months.
Block lays off 4,000 employees (40% of Workforce)
One of the most dramatic restructuring of the year so far has been of Jack Dorsey’s Block – the parent company of Square and Cash App. The company announced that it would reduce its workforce by 40%, cutting around 4,000 employees in late February. What made this unusual was Dorsey’s candid acknowledgment. “The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders, framing the cuts not as a setback but as a deliberate pivot toward an AI-first operating model.
Atlassian reduced 10% of workforce with 1,600 job cuts
Project management software firm Atlassian, led by co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, announced plans to cut 1,600 jobs which is roughly a tenth of its global workforce, earlier in March. Cannon-Brookes was direct about the role AI played in the decision.“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. It does,” he said.
Oracle: Up to 30,000 jobs at risk
Cloud computing giant Oracle is reportedly weighing cuts of between 20,000 and 30,000 positions, which is about 12-18% of its global workforce of roughly 162,000 employees. The cuts may begin this month and said to be linked to the company’s effort to manage costs as it ramps up spending on AI infrastructure, Bloomberg report said.
Meta: Up to 15,000 jobs may be removed
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is reportedly planning to eliminate as much as 20% of its nearly 79,000-person workforce – potentially cutting around 15,000 jobs. While there is no official information about the scale or timing, but Zuckerberg has made the company’s vision on AI clear, stating that projects which once required large teams can increasingly be completed by “a single very talented person.”
Other top tech companies joining the job cut wave
Telecommunications vendor Ericsson has announced 1,900 job cuts, while enterprise software companies Autodesk and Salesforce have each trimmed around 1,000 jobs from their respective workforces, reports said.
