Tech companies cut more than 120,000 jobs in 2026 and name AI as the top reason

More than 120,000 tech jobs have been cut so far in 2026. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said AI was the most-cited reason for layoffs for the third month in a row. Companies including Oracle, Meta, and Amazon have linked recent cuts to their AI spending.

Meta paused an internal program that recorded employees' keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI. The company stopped the program after a leak let sensitive data, including private conversations, become readable across the company. More than 1,500 employees had signed a petition against the program before the leak.

L'Oréal said on June 17 that it will put Maybelline's virtual makeup try-on tool inside ChatGPT, launching this summer. The tool lets shoppers see how makeup looks on them during a chat. L'Oréal also joined an OpenAI advertising test and will use ChatGPT to help shoppers find its products.

Getty Images said on June 21 that it agreed to a multi-year deal to show its licensed photos inside ChatGPT. The photos will appear in search results with credit attached, and will not be used to train OpenAI's models. Getty had earlier sued AI companies over how they use images.

The chip company Groq raised $650 million to rebuild itself as a cloud computing business. The round was led by the investors Disruptive and Infinitum. The funding comes about six months after Nvidia paid $20 billion to license Groq's chip technology and hire away its founder and much of its staff.