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SUSE lays off 1 in 10 workers – citing AI and automation
Squarespace also announced layoffs this week, but explicit ties to AI remain inconsistent.
According to exclusive reporting by The Register, enterprise Linux provider SUSE will lay off one in 10 of its nearly 2,000-person workforce due to “automation and AI,” CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen told staff via email.
Van Leeuwen noted that AI is rapidly changing how software companies function.
“AI capabilities are advancing exponentially, forcing us to radically reimagine our work,” he said, adding that “the organizational design and cost base that SUSE is built on today will not carry us forward successfully.”
He did not specify which roles would be terminated, but The Register reports that staff will be notified by Nov. 4.
AI is impacting many parts of the tech industry, including open source. Just last month, Linus Torvalds announced he had used Claude Code to write a Linux patch, which Linux enthusiasts read as an evolution of his stance on AI.
By some reports, businesses are finally seeing some ROI from AI after a few years of uncertainty. But that remains localized, ironically, to tech itself. As one economist recently noted, AI has primarily increased revenue per employee at major tech companies, while leaving most other companies unchanged.
The trade-off for that growth is, at least in some cases, layoffs. But layoffs credited to AI in some way don’t mean that human roles are always being replaced. Last month, Microsoft announced it would buy out 60,000 of its workers — some of which are in its Copilot division — to prioritize AI efforts, though it’s also likely the company is reacting to spending a significant amount of money on AI infrastructure.
Jobloss.ai’s layoff tracker shows primarily tech companies — including Uber, Salesforce, and GitLab — in its recent entries, but job loss attribution to AI is still mixed, and the number of roles cut isn’t always jarringly huge.
It’s also hard to tell whether a layoff strategically frames pre-AI plans as being due to AI capabilities or is actually a result of them. That question circulated around Block’s major layoffs earlier this year. Squarespace also announced layoffs of 19% of its staff yesterday, though company communications don’t explicitly name AI. Still, vibecoding has impacted website builders overall, though Squarespace itself has invested in AI offerings.