In a letter to the company on Wednesday, Intuit CEO Sasan Gudarji announced plans to lay off 1,800 employees — about 10% of the company’s roughly 18,000 employees — and hire the same number of new employees as part of a major reorganization that is said to be focused on AI.
“As I’ve said many times, the age of AI is one of the most significant technology transformations of our lifetimes,” Goodarzi wrote in a blog post on Intuit’s website. “This is truly an extraordinary time. AI is driving global innovation at an incredible pace, transforming every industry and business in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. Companies that aren’t prepared to take advantage of this AI revolution will fall behind and eventually cease to exist.”
The CEO said Intuit is in a strong position and that the job cuts are not related to cost-cutting, but will allow the company to “allocate additional investments in the areas that matter most to support our customers and drive growth.” The company expects its employee headcount to grow overall in fiscal 2025 due to new hires.
Intuit’s layoffs (which collectively qualify as “mass layoffs” under the WARN Act) affected various divisions across the company and more than 250 employees, including the closure of Intuit’s offices in Edmonton, Canada, and Boise, Idaho. About 1,050 employees are being laid off for “not meeting expectations,” according to Goodarzi’s letter. Intuit also plans to eliminate more than 300 positions across the company to “streamline” operations and shift resources to AI, and consolidate 80 technology roles into “strategically growing technology teams and capabilities” in locations such as Atlanta, Bangalore, New York, Tel Aviv and Toronto.
The company plans to accelerate investments in Intuit Assist, its AI-powered financial assistant that provides AI-generated financial advice, and plans to hire new talent across engineering, product development, data science and customer relations, with a particular focus on AI expertise.
It’s not just AI
While Goodarzi’s messaging is focused on AI, Intuit’s restructuring is more complicated. A closer look at the layoffs reveals that many of the 1,800 job cuts are performance-driven departures (such as the 1,050 mentioned above). The restructuring also includes cutting 10% of executive roles at director level and above (“to continue to improve the speed of decision-making,” Goodarzi said).
These figures suggest that the reorganization could also be an opportunity for Intuit to shed underperforming employees, using the AI hype cycle as a powerful backdrop for a broader internal cleanup effort.
But it’s always a good time for the CEO to talk about how he’s embracing the latest and hottest technology. Goodarzi writes, “With GenAI, we’re delivering more engaging customer experiences, increasing our monetization potential, and driving operational efficiencies within Intuit. But this is just the beginning of the AI revolution.”
