The tech dinosaur said the layoffs will affect a “low single-digit percentage” of its workforce. That might not sound much until you remember IBM had about 270,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2024. No one at Armonk wants to give an exact number, probably because it looks better when written in percentages.

An IBM spokesuit tried to soften the blow, saying: “IBM’s workforce strategy is driven by having the right people with the right skills to do the work our clients need. We routinely review our workforce through this lens and at times rebalance accordingly.”

The ever shrinking Big Blue joins a long list of big names culling staff while preaching the gospel of artificial intelligence. Amazon binned around 14,000 jobs last week, UPS trimmed 14,000 managers over the past 22 months, and Target has dumped 1,800 corporate roles. All in the name of “efficiency.”

Corporate bosses across the industry are saying that this is some great leap forward, saying AI will make workers “more productive.” What they really mean is fewer workers doing more work.

IBM boss Arvind Krishna bragged recently that his firm had already used AI agents to replace “a couple of hundred” human resources staff. He claimed that this allowed the company to hire more programmers and salespeople, as if that makes it all fine.

While wielding the redundancy knife, IBM has been busy boasting about its quantum computing ambitions. It wants to beat Google, Microsoft, and various startups to create the world’s first truly useful quantum machine. The company is cobbling together clusters of quantum chips it says could bring large-scale computing within five years, which is convenient timing for a press release.

IBM’s latest results showed a bit of growth in its consulting business, but that hasn’t stopped the trimming. Marketing, communications, and other teams have already felt the pain since 2024. The message from Armonk seems clear: AI is the future, and if you’re not building it, you’re probably getting replaced by it.