Snap Inc blames AI as it lays off 1,000 workers

Cuts by Snapchat’s parent company come in response to a declining stock price and pressure from an activist investor

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/snapchat">Snapchat’s parent company plans to lay off 16% of its employees, around 1,000 people, citing “rapid advancements in artificial intelligence”, the social media company told staff on Wednesday in an internal memo.

The staff reduction is part of a wave of tech industry layoffs in the past year, with many firms blaming https://www.theguardian.com/technology/artificialintelligenceai">AI for the cuts.

Snap Inc’s layoffs follow https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/activist-investor-irenic-swoops-snap-with-new-stake-shares-surge-2026-03-31/">demands last month from Irenic Capital Management, an activist investor whose portfolio manager wrote a letter to Snap Inc CEO, Evan Spiegel, calling on him to reduce costs and headcount while criticizing the company’s current strategy.

In Spiegel’s https://www.businessinsider.com/snap-layoffs-ai-read-memo-snapchat-2026-4">memo to staff, he claimed that the layoffs would move Snap towards profitability and suggested that artificial intelligence could fill the lack of human labor.