Freshworks and Coinbase announce more than 1 in 10 jobs to go as companies replace workforce with AI technologies — tech company layoffs near 100K in 2026 alone

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More companies are blaming AI for layoffs

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  • More companies are laying off employees, with AI cited as a reason
  • Freshwords is reducing its headcount by 11%
  • Coinbase is cutting its employee count by 14%

Artificial intelligence is being referenced as the cause of more job losses as two more companies join the list of tech companies laying off employees in 2026.

Freshworks has announced it will trim 11% of its workforce, or about 500 jobs, as the company addresses routine work with AI and automation.

Coinbase is also set to lay off around 14% of its workforce, or 700 jobs, as the company moves towards becoming ‘AI-native’.

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Layoffs near 100,000 in 2026

Layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi places the total number of tech job layoffs at 93,294 so far in 2026.

Speaking to Reuters, Freshworks CEO Dennis Woodside said the workforce reduction was due to the company seeing routine work being reduced by AI and automation.

“Over half our code is written by AI,” he said, adding that the company's use of automation had cut down on the “rote work that technology can take care of.”

Coinbase pointed to market factors and AI as the joint causes behind its workforce reduction, with CEO Brian Armstrong issuing a blog post explaining the reasoning behind the decision. “We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native,” Armstrong said.

March 2026 was the worst month for tech layoffs since 2024, with AI commonly being cited as either the main cause, or a contributing factor in many cases. While Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang may say that AI creates jobs, and that ‘AI doomers’ are casting a negative light on the technology, the metrics on the number of layoffs are less muddy than the number of jobs AI has created.

Meta recently announced it was trimming its headcount by 10%, or around 8,000 jobs, as the company attempts to address rapidly rising AI spend across data centers and compute.

This reduction would act as the first phase of a previous announcement by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in March 2026 that said the company could see its headcount reduced by as much as 20%, or 16,000 jobs, as AI technology increases efficiency.

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Benedict Collins
Benedict Collins
Senior Writer, Security

Benedict is a Senior Security Writer at TechRadar Pro, where he has specialized in covering the intersection of geopolitics, cyber-warfare, and business security.

Benedict provides detailed analysis on state-sponsored threat actors, APT groups, and the protection of critical national infrastructure, with his reporting bridging the gap between technical threat intelligence and B2B security strategy.

Benedict holds an MA (Distinction) in Security, Intelligence, and Diplomacy from the University of Buckingham Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS), with his specialization providing him with a robust academic framework for deconstructing complex international conflicts and intelligence operations, and the ability to translate intricate security data into actionable insights.

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