Where does the AI dividend go?

“We’re just getting started. We want to roll out across the entire company what’s working today in individual applications. This will enable us to grow faster, work more efficiently, and set new standards for quality.”

“Gleichzeitig richtet Tamedia ihre Redaktionen und zentrale redaktionelle Funktionen neu aus: mit klareren publizistischen Prioritäten, gebündelten Aufgaben, stärker automatisierten Prozessen sowie einem gezielten Einsatz von AI & Data”

“We continue to believe the opportunities related to AI are greater than the impact of AI-related efficiencies in our business, and we expect that to continue as AI enables enterprises to do much more.”

Infosys says 80,000 employees use AI coding tools while it still plans to hire 20,000 graduates; Parekh expects AI services to account for almost half of the company’s work within two to three years. (paraphrase)

BMW Group's Capital Market Day release states: 'Through the efficient use of artificial intelligence, the company aims to align itself even more systematically for agility and effectiveness across all departments and corporate levels. This calls for significantly leaner management structures and a reorganisation of the divisions. By the middle of next year, the BMW Group will reduce the number of divisions and associated management roles by 20 percent, with a comparable reduction at the organisational levels below.' (paraphrase)

“We are consistently aligning our products, processes and teams with the broad use of artificial intelligence. Our goal is to further strengthen our global competitiveness in technology, speed and cost. … This technological realignment also requires adjustments to our organization and capacities.”

Oracle's quarterly report on Form 10-Q states: 'During fiscal 2026, our management approved, committed to, initiated and further supplemented plans to restructure to implement certain strategic measures and further improve operational efficiencies, including through the adoption and integration of artificial intelligence technologies across certain functions and other operational activities' and 'Subsequent to August 31, 2026, our management supplemented the 2026 Restructuring Plan by approximately $700 million to reflect additional actions that we expect to take.' (paraphrase)

“In addition to the harmonization and consolidation of technical platforms and processes, as well as the consistent use of artificial intelligence in internal workflows, the transformation program provides for a reduction in the workforce from the current level of approx. 3,800 to about 3,350 full-time employees, with the adjustment being split roughly equally between domestic and international operations.”

“strategically reallocating resources to provide additional capacity to support our AI and growth initiatives”

“Our Eigen Engineering Agent is an excellent example of our ability to rapidly scale AI. As you’ll recall: up to 50 percent greater efficiency and up to 80 percent higher quality in the production of industrial software.”

Q2 2026 earnings call: savings from the optimization program "will be reinvested to fuel our growth engines, specifically our AI platform development and our people." Management said headcount is down roughly 10% year over year with revenue per head up almost 10%. (paraphrase)

“We are becoming a more efficient company, and we’re delivering cost savings slightly ahead of plan. This creates additional resources to reinvest in growth.”

Q3 FY2026 earnings call: "Coding agents now author 27% of committed code in the engineering teams using these tools. ... With these efficiency gains, we initiated a roughly 10% reduction in our technology workforce and freed up significant capacity to accelerate strategic product development." (paraphrase)

“the Company is evolving its organization to better align its teams with working in an age of AI automation.”

“Over the past year, we have achieved significant efficiencies, including increased use of digital tools and AI based solutions that help handle simpler tasks more efficiently. At the same time, customer behaviour is increasingly shifting towards digital solutions. Against this backdrop, we are adjusting capacity to reflect how the bank operates today and how customers engage with us.”

TechCrunch: Remote reports "a 50% increase in revenue per employee resulting from AI adoption." "This has reduced Remote's hiring plans, but hasn't caused any job cuts, van der Voort says." (paraphrase)

CFO Susan Li on the first-quarter 2026 call: "We believe a leaner operating model will allow us to move more quickly while also helping to offset the substantial investments we are making." At an April 30 town hall, Mark Zuckerberg told staff: "Getting everyone internally to use AI tools and getting to do the work more efficiently is not the thing that's driving layoffs." (paraphrase)

CEO Chuck Robbins: 'The companies that will win in the AI era will be those with focus, urgency, and the discipline to continuously shift investment toward the areas where demand and long-term value creation are strongest.' CFO Mark Patterson: 'This was really not a savings-driven restructure... this is more [about] realigning resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.' (paraphrase)

Commerzbank's May 8, 2026 press release: "In the next phase of development, Commerzbank will consistently deploy AI agents to support entire processes – ranging from account switching and know-your-customer (KYC) procedures and document checks to the drafting of contracts. This will significantly reduce labour-intensive tasks." and "The Bank’s continued transformation is accompanied by a Group-wide reduction of around a further 3,000 gross positions." CEO Bettina Orlopp told dpa on May 15 that AI would account for a "very large part" of the cuts. (paraphrase)

Q3 FY2026 earnings call: "As we transform BILL into an AI-native organization, we are aligning our cost base to that future. We expect this initiative to generate approximately $110 million in gross annualized savings with approximately $20 million to $30 million reinvested in critical growth areas in FY '27." (paraphrase)

Founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn said the cuts were not cost-cutting but about redefining how the company operates in the agentic AI era, with internal AI usage up over 600% in three months. (paraphrase)

Q1 2026 earnings call: "We are seeing strong early signs of scale ... with headcount growth decoupling from revenue as we deeply leverage agentic and AI to make our delivery more productive." (paraphrase)

CEO Brian Armstrong said two forces were converging: a down crypto market requiring cost cuts now, and AI changing how the company operates, with engineers shipping in days what used to take weeks. (paraphrase)

On the May 5 2026 earnings call, CEO Enrique Lores said PayPal would remove duplication and layers from its organizational structure and accelerate AI adoption and automation across its operations, naming a leader "in charge of driving, function by function, process by process, this AI transformation" (as TechCrunch reported the call). (paraphrase)

“I think the first thing that's going to happen is, as we create more capacity, we're going to try and fill the technological backlog.”

Cognizant's own Form 10-Q glossary defines the programme as "Project Leap | Program introduced in Q2 2026 aimed at streamlining operations and enhancing productivity through AI-led efficiencies", and its risk-factor caption reads "Project Leap, including the associated reductions in headcount". Cognizant quantifies the programme only in dollars, never in people. (paraphrase)

ServiceNow is using AI to boost productivity and expects to hold overall headcount flat even as the company integrates acquisitions, so it will not have to backfill open jobs. (paraphrase)

ING Group, investor presentation "Driving value through digitalisation, scalability and (Gen)AI" (Morgan Stanley European Financials Conference, London, 18 March 2026): "Our scalable Operations are based on three overarching fundamentals: A decade of relentless focus on digitalisation and straight-through-processing; The benefits of our scalable hubs network; A strong global platform allowing us to be a frontrunner in adopting and scaling of AI solutions", and "Decrease of ~1,250 Operations FTEs expected in 2026" (footnote: "Among others in KYC and associated activities, which account for ~6,000 FTEs"). ING 1Q2026 results presentation (30 April 2026), under the heading "Digitalisation, scalability and AI support positive operating jaws": "Absolute costs in Operations to come down further, with a decrease of ~1,250 FTEs in Operations in 2026". (paraphrase)

CEO and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, in his post filed with the SEC (March 11, 2026): "I have made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by ~10% (or ~1,600 employees)." "We are doing this to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile." "Our approach is not 'AI replaces people'. But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas." (paraphrase)

“Proximus will reimagine its way of working and focus on efficiency through simplification and AI, driving workload reductions.”

CEO Jack Dorsey tied the reduction (headcount from over 10,000 to just under 6,000) to a shift toward leaner, AI-native teams built on Block's own agentic tooling, while also conceding COVID-era over-hiring. (paraphrase)

“Ces plans concernent environ 5 400 salariés majoritairement dans la zone Europe, MEA & Asie-Pacifique”

“Aggregate Technology spend and Support costs to reduce by c.£150m with completion of large tech. development cycle, AI efficiencies, and associated reductions and cost discipline in Support functions”

Dow's SEC Form 8-K (Item 2.05, filed Jan 29 2026) states it will reduce roughly 4,500 roles globally under 'Transform to Outperform,' targeting at least $2B in near-term Operating EBITDA 'in part by utilizing AI and automation to deliver step change in growth and productivity.' (paraphrase)

“The Company is taking these actions to support its transformation initiatives, including but not limited to (i) reallocating resources to AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution, (ii) prioritizing AI‑powered products and capabilities, and (iii) accelerating the transformation of its sales and go-to-market approach.”

Anthropic customer story: "Cox saw a 7x return on its first year of AI investment" ... "The marketing suite drove 55% faster speed to market ... as well as 40% higher efficiency. Cox redeployed that capacity against new growth rather than cutting." (paraphrase)

Google Cloud case study: "$53.9M in annual operational cost savings" ... "This success in transforming customer experiences with AI on Google Cloud is now being scaled across the company, starting with TELUS Health and TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods ... TELUS is proving that AI doesn't just cut costs." (paraphrase)

Q3 FY2026 earnings call (CFO Mark Bentler): "this restructuring is about strengthening the business, not shrinking it. We're aligning resources to accelerate AI-driven productivity, improve sales execution and increase operating leverage." CEO Peter Brereton: "from here, we will continue to reinvest. Some of these new technologies are expensive. We need room to reinvest there." (paraphrase)

Schneider Electric uses an agentic system to extract and summarise requests for quotations for salespeople, which significantly improves sales productivity, with humans reviewing the output. (paraphrase)

“Today, HP Inc. announced a company-wide initiative (“fiscal 2026 plan”) to drive customer satisfaction, product innovation, and productivity through artificial intelligence adoption and enablement.”

An internal memo signed by CEO David Solomon, President John Waldron and CFO Denis Coleman on Oct 14, 2025 launching 'OneGS 3.0' said that 'to fully benefit from the promise of AI, we need greater speed and agility,' which would require 'a limited reduction in roles across the firm' alongside constrained headcount growth through year-end. (paraphrase)

“In particular, the profound changes brought about by digitalization and the increased use of artificial intelligence will lead to greater efficiency in many areas and processes. Due to these developments and structural adjustments, the Lufthansa Group plans to cut a total of around 4,000 jobs worldwide by 2030, the majority of which will be in Germany.”

“It's very clear that AI is going to change literally every job.”

“I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need less heads.”

“In the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

“Our total employment has actually gone up … because what it does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas.”

“[We will] gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.”

“Reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation.”

“we are beginning the transformation of our GTM organization to increase customer satisfaction and Autodesk's productivity”

“Today, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers.”

“It is doing the equivalent work of 700 full-time agents.”

SAP said it will 'further increase its focus on key strategic growth areas, in particular Business AI' and 'transform its operational setup to capture organizational synergies, AI-driven efficiencies.' The restructuring would affect approximately 8,000 positions. (paraphrase)