Cisco to Lay off 4,000 Employees

Cisco has announced that it is laying off 4,000 staff – or approximately 5% of its overall workforce – following significant estimates in AI.

The news follows the announcement of the company’s Q3 results, which saw a revenue of US$15.8bn, up 12% year over year.

This growth, says CEO Chuck Robbins, is “even more impressive,” given the environment Cisco is operating in: “A rapidly changing market, with intensifying competition and a global shortage of components critical to support our portfolio and the AI buildout from our customers.”

According to Chuck: “The companies that will win in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency and the discipline to continuously shift investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest. I’m confident Cisco will be one of those winners.”

“This means making hard decisions – about where we invest, how we’re organised and how our cost structure reflects the opportunity in front of us.”

Strategic investments at Cisco

According to Chuck, Cisco is planning to provide support to employees whose roles have been impacted by the layoffs. 

This includes helping employees find new opportunities – either within Cisco or outside of it – through its placement services programme, which has helped 75% of participants find new roles. 

While the company is reducing roles in some areas, Chuck says it is making “clear strategic investments," in others – particularly, he shares, in silicon, optics, security and employee AI usage. 

“These investments are building from a position of strength, and focusing on the technologies and business that will accelerate our growth, deliver unmatched innovation to customers and partners and define our future,” Chuck says.

Cisco has also said that those laid off by the company will have access to Cisco U, its learning platform, for one year. 

Key growth opportunities

Cisco’s last major rounds of layoffs took place in 2024.

The company announced it was laying off 4,000 employees in February 2024, and shared that it planned to reduce its headcount by around 5,600 employees in August 2024. 

When announcing layoffs in August, Cisco shared that the decision to reduce its headcount was made to give the company the opportunity to “invest in key growth opportunities and efficiencies.”

In total, around 12% of the company’s workforce at the time was impacted by the 2024 layoffs. 

AI layoffs on the rise

2026 has already been a big year for AI-led layoffs. 

In the first quarter of the year, nearly 80,000 employees were laid off in the tech industry, and close to half of those employees were laid off due to AI and automation. 

However, some critics have suggested that these layoffs may be unfairly attributed to AI – such as Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. 

AI Impact Summit in India in February 2026 he shared: “I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs.”