Snapchat owner cuts 1,000 jobs, citing AI efficiency

Snap Inc. the tech firm behind social network Snapchat cut 1,000 jobs on Wednesday, April 15. 

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The reason given for the job cuts is that AI is boosting efficiency as the company strives to be profitable. 

The shake-up at Snap involves about 16 percent of its full-time employees and elimination of more than 300 unfilled roles, chief executive Evan Spiegel said in a memo shared by the company. 

“We believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity and better support our community, partners and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote. 

“We have already witnessed small squads leveraging AI tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives.” 

The southern California-based tech firm joins a growing list of companies reducing staff while extolling productivity gains resulting from the use of AI. 

“This is an incredibly difficult decision, and I am deeply sorry to the colleagues who will be leaving us,” Spiegel wrote. 

Snap expects to cut more than $500 million from its annual costs by the second half of this year, establishing “a clearer path to net-income profitability,” the memo said.

Snap has gone through several rounds of job cuts during the past four years as it competes with rivals such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. 

Activist fund Irenic Capital Management disclosed a 2.5 percent stake in Snap recently and called for belt-tightening along with shedding its Spectacles smart glasses unit. 

Snap shares climbed more than 7.5 percent in trades that followed word of the layoffs but did not recover from losses suffered since the start of this year.

Job cut tracking platform Layoffs.fyi reported that more than 72,000 employees have been laid off by nearly 90 tech companies so far this year.