Salesforce Announces Another Huge Round of Layoffs in 2026

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Salesforce quietly laid off workers on 10 February 2026, cutting fewer than 1,000 roles across multiple departments. 

We are still awaiting a formal announcement from the company, but multiple employees have confirmed that their roles have been eliminated.

Which Salesforce Departments are being laid off in 2026?

This comes at a critical time for Salesforce, which is simultaneously undergoing a major leadership transformation and betting its future on AI.

The latest round of layoffs hits marketing, data analytics, and even its flagship AI product teams.

And this isn’t Salesforce’s first round of layoffs recently. In August last year, CEO Marc Benioff revealed that the company had cut 4,000 customer support roles, bluntly stating the company needed fewer employees as it deployed AI agents to handle support tasks. 

Workday also announced layoffs affecting 400 employees on February 4, 2026. The cuts also mainly hit customer support roles within Global Customer Operations, focusing on non-revenue positions. It’s a clear sign that even software companies are tightening costs amid restructuring.

Salesforce was already down from 9,000 to 5,000 headcount last year.

At that time, Benioff revealed that he is looking at "every single function" at Salesforce to see where AI can replace humans. AI already handles 30% to 50% of work at Salesforce, according to the CEO. Now, finally, he found his new targets.

What makes this more interesting news is that even teams working on Agentforce were not spared. Agetforce is the company’s flagship AI product that CEO Benioff has positioned as central to Salesforce’s future. He even jokingly said he might rename the company to Agentforce.

Benioff has been particularly vocal about this shift, stating publicly that Agentforce and other AI technologies have increased engineering team productivity by more than 30%, reducing the need for new software engineer hires.

But overall, the irony is hard to miss here. Literally, the employees who were building AI tools designed to automate work were themselves affected.

Executives Exodus Before

The layoffs coincide with a dramatic executive shake-up at Salesforce. The company has appointed new leaders to replace some high-profile executives who recently announced departures.

While executive turnover is common at companies of Salesforce’s size, losing multiple senior leaders in just 3 months has raised eyebrows across the tech industry.

This clearly shows that the company is going through a major transition. Leadership changes suggest the company wants fresh direction for 2026 and beyond. But what’s certain is that Salesforce, like many tech giants, is betting its future on AI. 

Bottom Line

But all this is not limited to Salesforce. Job cuts are part of a larger trend sweeping through corporate USA in 2026. Companies across multiple sectors are streamlining operations amid the rising adoption of AI tools. 

Amazon, for example, announced in January that it was reducing 16,000 roles worldwide. Pinterest laid off 15% of the team, and even news organizations like The Washington Post have to let go of 33% of their staff.