Twelve US-listed companies named artificial intelligence in the part of their 2026 layoff filings that describes the cut itself, the Item 2.05 section of a Form 8-K, by our count of 35 companies whose 2026 Item 2.05 filings came back from our searches of the SEC’s full-text system for filings that mention AI. The charges those 12 estimated at the time add up to as much as about $1.6 billion, and $1 billion of that is Cisco’s, by our arithmetic.
The count started with SoundHound AI, whose 8-K says it implemented a plan on 4 November to cut about 27% of its global workforce, as we reported in SoundHound Cuts 27% of Staff, Guides to Profit in 2H 2027. Its Item 2.05 gives the aim as “to align our teams and resources with our strategic priorities to drive long-term profitability” and does not name AI.
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The key insight: By our count of 35 companies’ 2026 layoff filings, 12 named AI in the Item 2.05 section that describes the cut, and their charge estimates add up to as much as about $1.6 billion. The median cut among the eight that gave a percentage was 9.5%; Cloudflare’s, at about 20%, was the largest of them.
Each entry gives the date of the plan, the size of the cut and the estimated charges as the company stated them, and the company’s own words on AI from the same Item 2.05 section:
Pegasystems, 7 January: “some role eliminations”, mainly in consulting, no percentage; a charge of about $13 million; “to better align roles and capacity to an AI-first delivery model”.
Pinterest, 26 January: “less than 15%” of its workforce; $35 million to $45 million; “reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution”.
Atlassian, 11 March: about 10%; $225 million to $236 million; “to accelerate building the future of teamwork in the AI era”.
Vertex, 28 April: about 9%, or about 170 people; $6 million to $8 million; “intended to become a more AI-enabled company”.
Coinbase, 5 May: about 14%, or about 700 people; $50 million to $60 million; to “optimize the Company’s operations for the AI era”.
Freshworks, 5 May: about 11%, or about 500 people; $7 million to $9 million; to “increase leverage of AI and automation across the business”.
Cloudflare, 7 May: about 20%; $140 million to $150 million; “to further accelerate its evolution to an agentic AI-first operating model”.
Cisco, 13 May: no percentage; up to $1 billion; “to invest in key growth opportunities including silicon, optics, security and artificial intelligence (AI)”.
Groupon, 21 May: up to 400 positions, including contractors; $7 million to $13 million; tied to its strategy “to rebuild the Company as an AI-native company”.
SentinelOne, 28 May: about 8%; about $25 million; to “concentrate investments across high-yielding growth areas including AI, Data, Cloud and Endpoint”.
Elastic, 23 June: about 7%; $22 million to $25 million; “to better align its teams with working in an age of AI automation”.
Zscaler, 1 September: about 3%; $30 million to $33 million; “to provide additional capacity to support our AI and growth initiatives”.
Workforce cuts stated in the Item 2.05 section of 2026 Form 8-K filings that name AI, for the eight that give a percentage; SoundHound, whose Item 2.05 cites profitability, in grey. Data: company filings with the SEC. The median is our arithmetic.
Eight of the 12 gave a single percentage. Their median cut was 9.5% of the workforce, between Vertex’s 9% and Atlassian’s 10%, by our arithmetic.
The largest of the eight was Cloudflare’s, at about 20%. SoundHound’s 27% is larger than any of them, and its Item 2.05 does not name AI.
The top of each company’s charge range adds up to about $1,617 million across the 12. Cisco’s up to $1 billion is about 62% of that; the other 11 add up to about $617 million (our arithmetic, using the estimates in each filing).
Some estimates moved later. Cloudflare’s third-quarter 10-Q puts total charges under its plan at up to $165 million, and Freshworks recognised $7.0 million and said it expected no further material charges.
The Filings That Did Not Name AI
The other 23 Item 2.05 sections in our set did not name AI. They include the largest charge estimate among them, Block’s $450 million to $500 million for a plan, announced on 26 February, to reduce its workforce by “more than 40%”. Intuit (about 17%), Snap (about 16%), Upwork (about 24%) and SoundHound also gave other aims in that section, such as efficiency, profitability or simplifying the organisation.
Several of them discussed AI elsewhere in the same filing. Block’s 8-K lists among its risks “the expected benefits of artificial intelligence tools to our employees”, and the letter Snap filed with its 8-K said “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work”. Reuters’ factbox of AI-linked layoffs, which we summed in Amazon, HSBC Lead 103,000 Job Cuts in AI Restructuring, described Block’s cut as an “AI-focused restructuring”.
As we read the 12 sections, most describe AI as where the money and roles are going (Cisco, SentinelOne, Zscaler, Pinterest) or as a new way of operating (Cloudflare, Pegasystems, Groupon), rather than as the tool doing the work.
As we read the set, two of the largest AI-era cuts in it, Block’s and SoundHound’s, gave other aims in the section that describes the cut.
Cloudflare, Form 8-K, Item 2.05, May 2026
“to further accelerate its evolution to an agentic AI-first operating model”
Three Implications
FOR INVESTORS The Item 2.05 section is where companies state the cut, the charges and the aim; 12 of 35 in our set put AI there.
FOR EMPLOYEES Eight of the 12 gave a percentage, from about 3% at Zscaler to about 20% at Cloudflare.
FOR READERS OF LAYOFF LISTS Block’s cut, which Reuters listed as AI-focused, did not name AI in its Item 2.05 section.
The framework says: “The constraint is access to systems, management expectations, workforce skill, and review processes โ the complements, not the engine.”
As we read it, the 12 filings describe changing those complements, the teams, roles and operating models, rather than the AI itself. The framework does not discuss these filings.
What Is Not Established
Our set is the 35 companies whose 2026 Form 8-K filings with an Item 2.05 disclosure came back from SEC full-text searches for terms such as “AI-first”, “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “workforce” or “restructuring plan”; it is not every layoff filed this year. We counted a filing as naming AI only if AI, artificial intelligence or agentic appears in its Item 2.05 section. Percentages, head counts and charges are the companies’ own estimates at the time of filing. None of the 12 Item 2.05 sections states that AI performs the eliminated roles, and we have not established how many jobs, if any, AI replaced.
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Twelve companies put AI into the formal description of their 2026 layoffs, with a median cut of 9.5% among those that gave one; others, including Block and SoundHound, described their cuts in other terms in that section.
A note on sourcing. Every percentage, head count, charge and quotation is from the companies’ Form 8-K filings with the SEC (Item 2.05 unless stated), plus Cloudflare’s third-quarter 2026 10-Q, Block’s 8-K and the letter Snap filed as an 8-K exhibit. The set of 35 companies comes from our searches of the SEC’s full-text search system; the counts, median and totals are our arithmetic. The description of Block’s cut as AI-focused is Reuters’, from its factbox.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
