International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) announced on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2025, that it will cut thousands of jobs in the fourth quarter as the company pivots toward higher-growth areas such as AI consulting and software.
The technology company, which had 270,000 employees at the end of 2024, said the move aligns its workforce with changing market demand, according to The New York Times.
“We routinely review our workforce through this lens and at times rebalance accordingly,” a company spokesperson said, per Bloomberg. “In the fourth quarter, we are executing an action that will impact a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce.”
For years, IBM has practiced what it calls “workforce rebalancing,” cutting some positions while adding others, The Times reports. The number of workers in the United States is expected to remain steady despite some cuts.
Since Arvind Krishna took over as CEO in 2020, IBM has pushed aggressively into high-growth areas such as cloud computing and AI.
Bookings for AI consulting and software surged to $9.5 billion in the third quarter, per The Times, citing a research report from Jefferies.
In an October call with analysts, IBM Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh said AI adoption among mainstream companies is accelerating, noting that about 80% of IBM’s AI consulting and software clients in the past six months are new.
IBM Layoffs Follow Other Big Tech Cuts Amid Industry Shift
IBM joins a growing list of leading technology companies that have made staffing cuts in recent months.
As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a July 14, 2025, Threads post that the company planned to “invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence.”
However, in October, Meta laid off 600 employees from its AI division, Superintelligence Labs, to accelerate product development. The layoffs hit teams in FAIR AI research, product-related AI, and AI infrastructure, but did not affect newer hires in the TBD Lab, which focuses on superintelligence and is actively recruiting and hiring.
“By reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load-bearing and have more scope and impact,” Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang wrote in a memo, per Axios.
United Parcel Service (UPS) began 2025 with nearly half a million employees. The Atlanta-based logistics giant shared in its third-quarter earnings report, released on Oct. 28, that it has cut about 48,000 jobs as part of a major cost-cutting effort to boost profits, stay competitive, and regain investor confidence, AFROTECH™ noted.
“We are executing the most significant strategic shift in our company’s history, and the changes we are implementing are designed to deliver long-term value for all stakeholders,” UPS CEO Carol Tomé said in a statement.
Amazon is also laying off about 14,000 employees — roughly 4% of its corporate workforce — as part of a broader effort to simplify operations and respond more quickly to technology-driven changes.
While the cuts coincide with Amazon’s expanding use of AI, CEO Andy Jassy attributed the move to cultural factors during the company’s Oct. 30 earnings call, AFROTECH™ noted.
“The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven, not right now at least. It’s culture,” Jassy said.
“If you grow as fast as we did for several years, the size of businesses, the number of people, the number of locations, the types of businesses you’re in, you end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers,” he added.
