Alphabet added 11,830 workers over the past year while Meta and Microsoft cut head count. Each Big Tech company is balancing AI spending against workforce size.
The three largest US tech companies reported head counts heading in different directions over the past year. Alphabet added 11,830 employees. Meta cut more than 2,000. Microsoft shed 5,000. The moves come as each company pours tens of billions into AI while reshaping their workforces.
Block CEO Jack Dorsey wrote on X in February that "the intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working." Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said AI could lead to "significant enduring job loss." AWS CEO Matt Garman has called doomsday predictions overblown. The World Economic Forum's 2026 Global Risks Report estimates 92 million jobs will be displaced by 2030, with 170 million created.
Alphabet disclosed in its July 22 earnings report that head count rose to 198,933 as of June 30, up from 187,103 a year earlier. The biggest jump came in the second quarter of 2026, when it added more than 4,000 workers. The addition accounted for over one-third of net hiring over the past year. Google laid off around 12,000 employees in 2023 and has since made several smaller rounds of cuts affecting thousands more.
Meta's head count shrank by over 2,000 between the first and second quarters of 2026, to 75,472 as of June 30. The 75,472 figure represents a 1% year-over-year decrease. The company said the figure includes about 8,000 employees affected by its May layoff. Most of those workers will not appear in head count by the end of the third quarter, Meta said. In an email to laid-off staff, the company called the cuts part of a "continued effort to run the company more efficiently" and to help offset other investments. Meta is moving over 7,000 employees to new AI initiatives. It forecast 2026 capital expenditures at $130 billion to $145 billion, raised from an earlier $125 billion to $145 billion range.
Microsoft had about 223,000 full-time employees as of June 30, 5,000 fewer than a year earlier. The company announced plans to lay off roughly 4,800 employees earlier in July, after a voluntary retirement program offering buyouts. About one-third of the nearly 9,000 eligible employees took the buyout, Microsoft said. The Xbox division also plans to cut 20% of its workforce this fiscal year. Microsoft is spending heavily on AI. Investor concerns that AI could upend traditional software helped pull the stock down 18% in June, its worst monthly performance since the dot-com era. The stock now trades at $392.40, with an Alpha Score of 61. MSFT stock page
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