AI-Driven Job Cuts: A Look at Recent Displacements in Major Companies

Share this article If you like this article, share it with your friends. Facebook X LinkedIn Bluesky Copy to Clipboard Copy Opinion AI/Machine Learning Business strategy What job losses blamed on AI tell us about the next decade Block. WiseTech. Commonwealth Bank. A viral Substack post that wiped $300 billion from the market. It wasn’t a bad week for tech. It was a signal. Dexter Cousins Mar 2, 2026 8 min read Share 0 Photo: AdobeStock In March 2021 I sat on national television and said we were at the precipice of a quantum shift. AI was removing task-based roles. The organisations that would survive were the ones with leaders who had already learned to deliver results in chaos and constraint. The interviewer moved on. The segment ended. The world kept going. I had started my business five years earlier on a single conviction: that the operators building startups from nothing were a different calibre of leader entirely, and that the conditions they worked in were not a startup quirk but a preview of how every organisation would eventually have to operate. Last week, that prediction arrived. Not gradually. All at once. Five days that changed the conversation On Tuesday, WiseTech Global, the Sydney-based logistics software company, announced it was cutting 2,000 jobs , nearly a third of its global workforce across 40 countries, as part of a two-year AI-driven restructure. Some teams, including its recently acquired US cloud division E2open, face cuts of up to 50%. if ( ! document.getElementById( "mc-email-capture-js-js" ) ) { const script = document.createElement( "script" ); script.src = "https://assets.startupdaily.net/wp-content/themes/private-media-core/assets/build/js/mc-email-capture.js"; script.id = "mc-email-capture-js-js"; script.defer = true; script.setAttribute( "data-wp-strategy", "defer" ); document.head.appendChild( script ); } Get the best of Startup Daily straight to your inbox Want to know the latest in startup news? Subscribe to our daily news and analysis coverage on what’s happening to ANZ startups, investors and the broader ecosystem. And best of all, it's FREE! * indicates required Email Address * By continuing, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy . if (!window.Zephr) window.Zephr = {}; if (!window.Zephr.outcomes) window.Zephr.outcomes = {}; window.Zephr.outcomes['article-email-cta'] = { featureLabel: 'Article Email CTA', outcomeId: 'transformation/1', outcomeLabel: 'Show Article Email Capture' }; The same day, Commonwealth Bank confirmed 300 technology roles were being eliminated. WiseTech’s stock rose 11%. CBA’s investors barely flinched. On Thursday, Block announced it was reducing its workforce from just over 10,000 to under 6,000 . More than 4,000 people told to leave. Stock up 24%. In his letter to shareholders, Block CEO Jack Dorsey was unambiguous about the reason. “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better.” He was equally direct about why he acted decisively rather than gradually: “Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead.” WiseTech CEO Zubin Appoo was just as plain. “The era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over.” These are not euphemisms. They are executives stating, on the record, that their previous headcount was a legacy of how organisations used to have to operate, and that AI has made that model obsolete. The market agreed, loudly, both times. The Substack post that broke the SaaS market Before Block and WiseTech made headlines, something else happened that most people outside financial markets missed. Over the weekend of 22-23 February, a 5,000-word Substack post by Citrini Research went viral. Titled “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis,” it was written as a fictional retrospective from two years in the future, laying out a scenario in which AI adoption triggers a cascade of white-collar job losses that eventually crashes the S&P 500 by 38%. Co-authored by James van Geelen and Alap Shah of Lotus Technology Management, it described itself as a thought exercise, not a prediction. The market treated it as something closer to a diagnosis. On Monday 23 February, enterprise software stocks were obliterated. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Adobe, and Workday each dropped 7% or more. Intuit fell nearly 11%. The Dow Jones shed 800 points in a single session. The iShares software ETF hit a new 52-week low, down nearly 30% year to date. Michael Burry amplified the post on X with three words: “And you think I’m bearish.” The mechanism Citrini described is worth understanding because it is not theoretical. It is already playing out. AI reduces human headcount. Fewer humans means fewer seat licences. Fewer seat licences means SaaS revenue contracts. SaaS companies cut their own staff to