On Wednesday, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi announced in a letter to the company that it would lay off 1,800 employees—about 10 percent of its 18,000 workforce—while simultaneously undergoing a major restructuring. plans to hire as many new workers as part of The effort is focused on AI.
“As I've shared many times, the era of AI is one of the most important technology transformations of our lifetime,” Goodarzi wrote in a blog post on Intuit's website. “It's a truly extraordinary time — AI is fueling global innovation at an incredible pace, transforming every industry and company in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Companies that benefit from this AI revolution are not ready to be picked up, will fall behind and, in time, will no longer exist.”
The CEO says that Intuit is in a position of strength and that the layoffs are not related to cost cutting, but that they allow the company to “add additional resources in our most important areas to support our customers and drive growth.” Allocate investment.” With the new hires, the company expects to increase its headcount in its 2025 fiscal year.
Intuit's layoffs (which collectively qualify as “mass layoffs” under the WARN Act) affected various departments within the company, including the closing of Intuit's offices in Edmonton, Canada, and Boise, Idaho. , which affected more than 250 employees. According to Goodarzi's letter, about 1,050 employees will be laid off because they are “not meeting expectations.” Intuit has also eliminated more than 300 roles across the company to “streamline” operations and shift resources toward AI, and the company has reassigned 80 tech roles to “sites where we strategically align our technology teams and Expanding capacity, plans to strengthen, such as Atlanta, Bangalore, New York, Tel Aviv and Toronto.
In turn, the company plans to accelerate investment in its AI-powered financial assistant, Intuit Assist, which provides AI-generated financial recommendations. The company also plans to hire new talent in engineering, product development, data science, and customer-facing roles, with a particular emphasis on AI expertise.
Not just about AI
Despite Goodarzi's heavily AI-focused message, the restructuring at Intuit reveals a more complex picture. A closer look at the layoffs reveals that many of the 1,800 job cuts are from performance-based layoffs (like the 1,050 mentioned above). The restructuring also includes a 10 percent reduction in executive positions at the director level and above (“to continue to increase the speed of decision-making,” says Goodarzi).
The data suggests that the restructuring could serve as an opportunity for Intuit to cut its workforce of underperforming staff, adding to the AI hype cycle of broader house cleaning. Use it as a great backdrop for your efforts.
But as for CEOs, it's always a good time to talk about how they're embracing the latest, hottest thing in technology: “With the introduction of GenAI,” Goodarzi wrote, “We're now delivering even more compelling customer experiences, increased monetization capabilities, and driving capabilities in how work is done within Intuit. But this is just the beginning of the AI revolution.”