Sam Altman: Companies Are 'AI Washing' Their Layoffs

At the AI Impact Summit in India in February 2026, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared that he believes organisations are blaming AI for workforce cuts. 

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, companies announced more than 54,000 AI-related layoffs in the US for 2025. 

Sam told attendees: “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”.

The rise of AI layoffs

In February, fintech firm Block announced it was laying off 4,000 employees – or 40% of its workforce. 

These headcount reductions followed the company announcing 17% year-on-year growth, and Q4 profits doubling from Q1.

CEO Jack Dorsey described this as a “difficult decision,” in a letter to shareholders saying that AI tools “have changed what it means to build and run a company”. 

He said: “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better. And AI tool capabilities are compounding faster every week”. 

Similarly, Workday announced headcount reductions at the beginning of February, with the human capital management platform announcing it was planning to cut 2% of its workforce to better focus on AI.

In 2025, the company announced a significant restructuring plan that included cutting 8.5% of its global workforce, for similar reasons. 

Former CEO Carl Eschenbach said at the time: “We have so much opportunity ahead of us, especially with the potential of AI, and we have a strong foundation to build upon.”

AI’s impact on employee workloads

There are mixed opinions on how AI will impact the way employees work – and the amount of work they have. 

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, comments that he believes AI will fundamentally reshape professional work, saying in an interview with the Financial Times that he thinks AI could fully automate many tasks currently done by office workers in as little as a year and a half. 

He said: “White-collar work, where you're sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person – most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

AI does not seem to be reducing the amount of work employees have, however – with research suggesting the technology is actually increasing employee workloads.

A study from the University of California Berkeley, which surveyed a 200-person US technology firm over the course of eight months, found that employees took on a broader scope of work with AI compared to without it. 

Employees also reported feeling more pressure to maintain new levels of productivity as high output became more normalised within the company. 

As AI scales, IBM is even planning to increase its entry level hiring across a wide range of departments – but Nickle LaMoreaux, CHRO of IBM, says the company is approaching hiring slightly differently as a result of the technology.

Discussing this hiring drive at Charter’s Leading with AI summit, she says: “The entry-level jobs that you had two to three years ago, AI can do most of them.

“So, if you’re going to convince your business leaders that you need to make this investment, then you need to be able to show the real value these individuals can bring now. And that has to be through totally different jobs.”