Satya Nadella addresses Microsoft layoffs, defends job cuts amid AI push<\/a><\/p>\nFurthermore, the economic windfall of AI remains heavily concentrated. Research by Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, showed that while mega-cap tech profit margins surged by over 20 per cent in late 2025, the broader Bloomberg 500 Index saw almost no change.<\/p>\n
Slok noted that Wall Street consensus expectations indicate investors simply do not believe AI will boost earnings outside of the technology sector.<\/p>\n
Slashing jobs and ‘SaaSpocalypse’<\/p>\n
Still, targeted AI-related layoffs are becoming a reality. Employment consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked roughly 49,135 job cuts directly attributed to AI so far this year. <\/p>\n
Even Microsoft cut 15,000 workers last year; while AI wasn’t explicitly blamed, CEO Satya Nadella noted in an internal memo that the company had to “reimagine our mission for a new era.”<\/p>\n
Wall Street is also pricing in this anxiety. In February, software stocks suffered a massive sell-off, called the “SaaSpocalypse”, after OpenAI and Anthropic unveiled enterprise-grade “agentic” AI systems capable of automating core functions traditionally handled by Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors.<\/p>\n
Pivot towards independence <\/p>\n
Looking past his 18-month timeline, Suleyman revealed that his ultimate mission at Microsoft AI is achieving “superintelligence.” <\/p>\n
Critically, he signalled that Microsoft intends to aggressively reduce its reliance on partner OpenAI by building its own independent proprietary systems. “We have to develop our own foundation models which are at the absolute frontier,” Suleyman asserted.<\/p>\n
Three months later, that aggressive forecast is already showing its age. A mounting pile of real-world evidence suggests that the AI boom is stumbling, even as Anthropic\u2019s Claude continues to dethrone OpenAI as the industry\u2019s top model and capture the lion’s share of enterprise revenue. <\/p>\n
Despite the growing skepticism, Suleyman doubled down in an MIT Technology Review feature in April, insisting that AI development is nowhere near hitting a performance ceiling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a sweeping forecast on the future of work, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has said that artificial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[25262,25,420,7829,25261,25167,20048,19554,320,7828,4136,25263],"class_list":["post-41465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-microsoft","tag-accountants","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-azure","tag-azure-ai","tag-desk-bound-roles","tag-human-level-performance","tag-lawyers","tag-marketers","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-ai","tag-microsoft-ai-ceo-mustafa-suleyman","tag-project-managers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}