Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others

Ah, the software sector bloodbath we flagged just yesterday has a new headliner: Monday.com, which has cheerfully announced that 20% of its workforce – over 600 people – are surplus to requirements, courtesy of an "AI-driven growth strategy." Because nothing says "strategic growth" like showing talent the door and replacing them with a glorified autocomplete engine. The company joins a growing list of over 20 tech outfits that have blamed AI for layoffs in 2026, a list that includes Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce – each having mastered the art of firing people with a straight face while evangelising the "democratization of intelligence." It's almost poetic.

What's particularly rich is the phrasing: "restructuring plan tied to an AI-driven strategy." That's corporate for "we bought the hype, and now we need to cut costs." The TechCrunch piece, titled "The running list: Major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI," is a grim ledger of how the AI revolution is panning out: fewer jobs, higher share prices, and a steady stream of press releases that sound like they were written by the very models that are replacing the humans. Each entry is a monument to the gap between the promise of abundance and the reality of wage theft.

So here we are: AI is supposedly going to set us free from drudgery, yet the immediate effect is that hundreds more people are updating their LinkedIn profiles. The "golden age" of AI looks an awful lot like the old age of capitalism, just with better grammar and a lot less guilt. Maybe the real intelligence is the friends we made along the way – except they've all been laid off too. Pass the aspirin – and maybe a job application.