LinkedIn’s CEO Announces Layoffs Despite Growth in Revenue

In a company memo released on 13 May, LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapero told employees that the company plans to cut around 5% of its global workforce despite recent revenue growth. 

The layoffs are estimated to affect 875 roles against LinkedIn’s global headcount of more than 17,500. Affected teams include the company’s Global Business Organization, marketing, engineering and product teams.

A spokesperson for LinkedIn has disputed the 5% figure but did not discuss the actual figure, saying the layoffs were part of the company’s “organisational changes” to align the brand for “future success”.

Daniel told employees in the memo that the company needs to “reinvent how we work, with agile teams focused on our highest priorities, and by shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term”.

He also stated that LinkedIn will scale back spending on marketing campaigns, vendor contracts, customer events, and underutilised office space, so that it “can focus teams on priorities that have the broadest impact with the highest ROI”.

Layoffs despite revenue growth

The announcement of layoffs comes at a notable time for the company. Despite discussions of job cuts, LinkedIn announced a 12% year-on-year revenue increase in its last quarter.

Representatives of the business have also stated the decision to layoff positions is unrelated to AI replacing roles and is more so aimed at positioning the company for greater profitability while prioritising infrastructure investments.

LinkedIn’s job cuts mirror a larger trend within the tech industry – while growth can help protect a business, it doesn’t ensure the protection of its teams, employees or investments.

As industry-wide trends continue to play a part in affecting the workforce, such as AI, tech employees could see disruptive changes like this increase over the next few years.

The link between AI and industry restructuring trends

Despite industry wide concerns over AI, Daniel’s memo doesn’t include any discussion on the technology, nor the discussion of its link to increasing layoffs in tech.

However, LinkedIn’s marketing team sent employees a follow-up memo on May 14, with Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Jessica Jensen saying that the company will “embrace new AI-enabled tools and workflows” to make human work go “further, faster”.

She also highlighted the reduction in LinkedIn’s paid media spend and its more refined geographic focus on the US and the UK.

The memo also points to LMS growth, the advancement of its agentic hiring solutions and building on its momentum with premium and small business offerings.

Despite the lack of clarity over LinkedIn’s reason for the layoffs, other companies in the tech industry have been more direct with the link between job cuts and AI scaling.

Cisco announced plans for its own AI-driven restructuring plan on 14 May, putting around 4,000 jobs at risk and Coinbase and Block cited AI productivity gains as the reason for layoffs in early 2026.

LinkedIn’s parent company, Microsoft, has also been tightening costs and implementing structure changes, most recently offering employee voluntary retirement buyouts to eligible long-serving US employees amid a period of larger spending on AI infrastructure.

Discussing how the layoffs will help reposition the company for the future success, Daniel says: “While I know that this level of change can bring a sense of uncertainty, it can also clarify our purpose.

“The world needs LinkedIn now more than ever, and while these are hard choices to make, they focus our work for our short and long-term impact.”