AI-linked layoffs are continuing at all manner of software companies.
Intuit — the company behind TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp — is preparing to cut 17% of its global workforce, according to Reuters, which cites an internal memo. Based on Bloomberg data putting Intuit’s total headcount at around 18,200 in mid-2025, that translates to upwards of 3,000 jobs.
CEO Sasan Goodarzi sent an email to staff framing the cuts as a strategic simplification: reducing complexity, streamlining operations, and sharpening focus on the company’s core priorities — chief among them, AI. The move fits a recognizable pattern. Intuit is not trimming to survive; it is restructuring to compete in a landscape where AI is rewriting what financial software can do.
The company has signed multi-year deals with both Anthropic and OpenAI, integrating their models into Intuit’s products and embedding Intuit’s tax, finance, accounting, and marketing capabilities into Claude and ChatGPT. The ambition is clear: make Intuit’s data and domain expertise the connective tissue inside the AI tools that consumers and businesses are already gravitating toward.
This is not Intuit’s first AI-driven restructuring. In 2024, the company laid off 1,800 employees — 10% of its workforce at the time — to accelerate investment in generative AI, including its Intuit Assist financial advisor product. Today’s announcement doubles down on that direction.
Intuit is far from alone. Upwork cut 25% of its staff earlier this month, with CEO Hayden Brown citing a future of smaller, AI-augmented teams. Block laid off 40% of its workforce in February, with Jack Dorsey explicitly naming AI as the driver. Coinbase, Workday, and McKinsey have all made similar moves, betting that leaner headcounts paired with AI tooling can deliver more output at lower cost.
The market has not been kind to software incumbents navigating this transition. Software stocks have significantly underperformed the broader Nasdaq since late 2025, as investors grow anxious about whether traditional SaaS business models can survive the shift to AI agents. Intuit shares are down nearly 40% year-to-date, and fell another 2% in premarket trading following today’s announcement. Analysts remain mostly bullish on the company’s long-term positioning, but the stock tells a more complicated story.
The deeper question — one the entire software industry is wrestling with — is whether the AI pivot will actually deliver. A January 2026 Oxford Economics briefing cautioned that many companies may be using AI as narrative cover for routine headcount reductions. Forrester, meanwhile, found that 55% of employers already regret AI-driven layoffs, often because the technology wasn’t yet capable of replacing the eliminated roles.
For Intuit, the bet is that its proprietary financial data, combined with frontier AI models from Anthropic and OpenAI, gives it a defensible edge that pure-play AI tools cannot easily replicate. Whether that proves true will determine whether today’s restructuring looks, in hindsight, like shrewd repositioning — or a costly miscalculation.