San Francisco, January 22, 2026, 09:02 PST
- Autodesk will cut about 7% of staff, roughly 1,000 roles, with most of the impact in customer-facing sales
- The company flagged $135 million to $160 million in pre-tax restructuring charges and raised its outlook above prior top-end guidance
- CEO Andrew Anagnost told employees the move is tied to a sales overhaul, not a push to replace workers with AI
Autodesk said it will lay off about 7% of its global workforce, or roughly 1,000 jobs, as it redirects spending toward its cloud platform and artificial intelligence work. (Reuters)
The cuts land as software companies keep reworking sales teams and budgets to free up money for AI and cloud products, even when the core business is holding up. Autodesk’s shares rose more than 3% after the announcement, despite the stock being down about 13% so far this year.
The company framed the move as the last leg of a multi-year sales and marketing tune-up. Autodesk is shifting from an older, channel-heavy approach toward subscriptions and usage-based pricing, a model that gives it more direct control over pricing and customer relationships.
A regulatory filing pegged total pre-tax restructuring charges at about $135 million to $160 million, mainly for termination benefits. Autodesk expects $90 million to $110 million of that to be recorded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, with the rest in fiscal 2027. (SEC)
Autodesk said a significant portion of the reductions will be in customer-facing sales roles, and it plans to reinvest part of the savings into strategic priorities across the business during the fiscal year ending January 31, 2027. The company expects to complete the plan by the end of its fourth quarter of fiscal 2027, subject to local law and consultation requirements.
Chief Executive Andrew Anagnost told employees the changes “will not become an annual process at Autodesk” and are “not driven by the external environment or an effort to replace people with AI.” He said the company will start notifying affected staff from January 22, with timing varying by country. (SEC)
Still, Autodesk warned in its filing that the plan could miss its targets or take longer than expected. It also flagged the chance of higher-than-expected costs and possible disruption to operations, including risks to hiring and retaining staff.
Autodesk also lifted its outlook, saying billings — a measure of customer invoicing that investors often treat as a demand gauge — and several other metrics for the current quarter and full year will exceed the top end of its prior forecast. It said it plans to exclude restructuring charges from its non-GAAP results, which remove certain items such as one-time costs.
Autodesk makes AutoCAD and other design tools used by architects, engineers and manufacturers, and it also sells software used in film and games for visual effects and production work. It competes with Adobe and PTC. (CNA)
The latest reduction adds to a long run of tech job cuts, even as companies keep spending aggressively on AI-related projects and cloud infrastructure.
