- IBM announced layoffs in its marketing and communications department to employees Tuesday in a roughly seven-minute meeting.
- Jonathan Adashek, IBM's chief communications officer, led the meeting, according to a person familiar with the matter.
- In December, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC that the company is “significantly increasing the AI skills of all of our employees.”
IBM on Tuesday announced job cuts in its marketing and communications department, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jonathan Adashek, IBM's chief communications officer, made the announcement during a roughly seven-minute meeting with staff from the division, said the person, who requested anonymity because the news has not been made public. .
The company did not respond to requests for comment.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC in December that after announcing plans to replace about 8,000 jobs with AI in August, the company was “developing the AI skills of all its employees.” It's improved significantly.” IBM announced in its earnings conference last January that it would cut 3,900 positions.
The cuts come in parallel with further downsizing in the tech industry. Some 204 tech companies have cut about 50,000 jobs so far this year, according to the website Layoffs.fyi. January was the heaviest month for layoffs since March, as Alphabet, Amazon and Unity announced layoffs.
IBM has returned to growth in recent years, but expansion is still slowing. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 4% year-over-year, even though it beat expectations. CFO James Kavanaugh spoke about workforce rebalancing during an earnings call.
The company has been trying to fit into the new AI narrative that has been a hot topic across technology since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022. In May, IBM announced WatsonX, billed as a development studio for enterprises to “train, tune, and deploy.” “Machine learning models.
According to IBM's January earnings release, its generative AI and Watsonx products have doubled in size since the third quarter of 2023, when they were in the low hundreds of millions of dollars.
IBM faces stiff competition in the enterprise AI space. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others offer similar services, and IBM has long been seen as lagging behind in the AI race, especially when it comes to monetizing its products.
“I think that's a fair criticism,” Krishna said on CNBC in December. “It's been slow to monetize and be slow to actually be able to use what Watson learned from winning Jeopardy.” he said. “I think the mistake we made was chasing a very big, monolithic answer that the world wasn't ready to absorb.”
About two years ago, IBM sold its Watson Health division to private equity firm Francisco Partners for an undisclosed amount.
This story is developing. Please check back for the latest information.
