Snap is laying off 16 percent of its workforce, blames AI
Snap is laying off around 1,000 people, or 16% of its workforce, which it appears to want to replace with AI. The cuts were announced in a company-wide memo from CEO Evan Spiegel, who added that more than 300 open positions were also being eliminated.
Spiegel said the “incredibly difficult” decision would likely save Snap more than $500 million by the second half of 2026, helping it “establish a clearer path to bottom line profitability.” Affected staff were informed by email and the company’s North America-based team was instructed to work from home. Snap said it would provide four months of severance pay to those affected by the layoffs, as well as health care and other rights.
“While these changes are necessary to realize Snap’s long-term potential, we believe rapid advances in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase speed, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote. “We’ve already seen small teams leverage AI tools to make significant progress across several important initiatives, including Snapchat+, improving ad platform performance, and improving the efficiency of our Snap Lite infrastructure. »
Snap laid off about 20 percent of its employees in , with further reductions in and . This follows in the footsteps of a number of tech companies that have laid off employees in favor of AI in an effort to improve efficiency, including , , and last year. Snap is expected to launch the consumer version of its Specs AR glasses later this year and recently expanded the brand into its own business.
