Snap Is Laying Off 16% of Full-Time Staff as It Embraces A.I.

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Snap Is Laying Off 16% of Full-Time Staff as It Embraces A.I.

The company, which owns the social media app Snapchat, said it was laying off about 1,000 employees as it increases its reliance on artificial intelligence.

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“We believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Evan Spiegel, Snap’s chief executive, said in a memo.

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By

Kailyn Rhone

April 15, 2026,

12:43 p.m. ET

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Snap on Wednesday announced plans to eliminate about 1,000 jobs, including 16 percent of its full-time staff, as the company seeks to lower costs and increase its reliance on artificial intelligence.

In a

memo

to employees, Evan Spiegel, Snap’s chief executive, said that the company, based in Santa Monica, Calif., is also eliminating more than 300 roles it had planned to fill. The cuts are an attempt to find a path to profitability, he added, as Snap plans to reduce costs by more than $500 million by the second half of this year. It was unclear whether the 1,000 job cuts included some held by part-time employees.

“While these changes are necessary to realize Snap’s long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Mr. Spiegel added in the memo.

Investors embraced the decision, sending the Snap’s stock up about 9 percent in early trading Wednesday to more than $6 a share. Still, the company’s stock price is down more than 30 percent since the beginning of the year.

Snap joins a

flood of tech companies

announcing staff cuts as they say that A.I. can take over more of the work and improve efficiency. While many computer programmers view A.I. as a tool rather than a replacement, tech company executives have pushed the belief that the technology will continue to rapidly improve and reduce the need for humans.

Nearly 90 tech companies have eliminated at least 70,000 jobs this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry. The financial services company Block, which owns Square, Cash App and Tidal, laid off about

4,000 employees in February

, or about 40 percent of its work force, citing its embrace of A.I.

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