Cisco to lay off thousands of employees

Technology company Cisco announced Wednesday that it plans to lay off 5% of its global workforce, amounting to thousands of employees, as part of a company-wide restructuring.

Cisco joins a long list of tech companies that haveannounced workforce cuts in recent months.

The networking hardware and software maker said Wednesday that it plans to shift its focus to “key priority areas,” such as artificial intelligence.

“We continue to align our investments to future growth opportunities,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said inthe company’s second quarter earnings release. “Our innovation sits at the center of an increasingly connected ecosystem and will play a critical role as our customers adopt AI and secure their organizations.”

Cisco employs nearly 85,000 people, according to the company’s most recentannual report, meaning that more than 4,000 workers will likely be affected by layoffs.

Cisco indicated that the layoffs would beginthis year and continue into next year, saying severance and other termination benefits for employees would cost the company a total of nearly $800 million.

The company, contending with falling revenue, has turned its focus to the booming AI industry. Last year, the company announced it would acquire machine learning and cybersecurity companySplunk in a deal valued at $28 billion.

“The combination of these two innovative leaders makes them well positioned to lead in security and observability in the age of AI,” Cisco said in a September press release announcing the deal.

On Wednesday, Cisco also announced that its revenue fell 6% year-over-year in its fiscal second quarter and its earnings-per-share fell 3% over the same period.

Cisco’s job cuts come amid a string of layoffs in the tech industry, even as those companies pour billions of dollars into AI. Google, Amazon, PayPal and Duolingo have all announced layoffs recently. All told, more than 34,000 tech employees have been laid off since the start of 2024, according to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi.