IBM CEO: Layoffs Due to AI Led to ‘More Investment’ in Other Roles

Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM, said his company’s investment in artificial intelligence (AI) has ultimately led to a rise in employment in the firm.

According to a Tuesday (May 6) report from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), IBM replaced a few hundred human resources staffers with AI agents, bots that can perform tasks like analyze spreadsheets, conduct research and draft emails autonomously.

Consequently, IBM 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 told WSJ.

Krishna called these areas — such as software engineering, sales and marketing — “critical thinking” focused domains, where people need to do things that “face up or against other humans, as opposed to just doing rote process work,” according to the report.

WSJ noted that IBM didn’t say over what period its job reductions happened.

The CEO also noted that the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on IBM’s bottom line was “very limited,” given that most of its mainframe computer and quantum systems are built domestically.

However, he expressed caution about a possible reduction in demand due to tariffs, which could hit discretionary spending in the company’s consulting business.

“If the impact is within 3 to 4%, you actually can grit and manage through it,” Krishna said. “If the impact is going to be more like 10%, then that requires a lot more hardheaded management decisions.”

Krishna — along with the CEOs of Intel, Qualcomm and HP — met with Trump on March 10 to discuss the impact of tariffs on the industry.

“Some of the topics top-of-mind for our leadership team are trade policy and U.S. manufacturing,” that spokesperson said.

In February, Krishna argued that a drop in AI costs will drive demand for the technology.

“We will find that the usage will explode as costs come down,” Krishna told Bloomberg Television, according to a Feb. 11 report from PYMNTS.