IBM to Cut Thousands of Jobs as Focus Shifts From Consulting to Software

IBM reportedly plans to cut “thousands” of jobs during the current quarter.

The company is doing so as it shifts its focus to higher-growth software and services, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Nov. 4).

“We routinely review our workforce through this lens and at times rebalance accordingly,” an IBM spokesperson said in the report. “In the fourth quarter, we are executing an action that will impact a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce.”

IBM employed about 270,000 workers at the end of 2024, according to the report.

The report said that IBM’s consulting division has been challenged by customers’ concerns about the economy, while its software division has drawn investor enthusiasm and a drive by CEO Arvind Krishna to make that unit the company’s largest business.

Reuters, which also reported on the job cuts, said IBM is focusing on software to tap into the growing amount of spending businesses are directing toward cloud services as they integrate artificial intelligence.

It was reported in May that Krishna said IBM’s investment in AI ultimately led to a rise in employment at the firm.

According to a May 6 Wall Street Journal report, IBM replaced a few hundred human resources workers with AI agents and then hired more programmers and salespeople.

“While we have done a huge amount of work inside IBM on leveraging AI and automation on certain enterprise workflows, our total employment has actually gone up, because what it does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas,” Krishna said, per the report.

PYMNTS reported in October that IBM, Oracle and Nvidia are racing to scale enterprise AI.

In the case of IBM, the company announced a partnership with Anthropic to embed the Claude family of large language models into its new AI-first software development environment. The integration will bring Claude into IBM’s hybrid-cloud ecosystem, allowing developers to modernize code, automate testing and deploy updates within tightly governed systems.

Also in October, IBM said it plans to launch a platform that will enable financial institutions, governments and corporations to manage digital assets across various blockchains while meeting their compliance obligations.

The IBM Digital Asset Haven is being developed in collaboration with digital wallet infrastructure provider Dfns.