Just a day after Amazon had said that it was laying off 16,000 employees, another major tech name has also announced a significant layoff.
Social media company Pinterest has said that it’ll lay off 15% of its staff as a part of an AI restructuring. Pinterest had more than 4,500 employees globally as of last April, so the job cuts could impact nearly 700 employees. The company said it would complete the restructuring by the end of September this year.
Pinterest said that as a part of the restructuring, it was reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution. It was also prioritizing AI‑powered products and capabilities, and accelerating the transformation of its sales and go-to-market approach.
“Our investments in AI and product innovation are paying off,” Pinterest CEO Bill Ready had said in November. “We’ve become a leader in visual search and have effectively turned our platform into an AI-powered shopping assistant for 600 million customers.”
Pinterest is the latest company that has announced layoffs while explicitly mentioning AI as one of the reasons behind the move. Just today, Amazon had said it would lay off 16,000 employees after having laid off 14,000 two months ago. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had previously said that he expected the company’s workforce to shrink in the coming years, partly because of the impact of AI. Other companies, including Salesforce, Fiverr, Allianz and others have also laid off employees while implementing AI in their workflows.