General Motors Lays Off Hundreds of IT Workers in Shift Toward AI-Focused Talent

May 12, 2026

General Motors is laying off approximately 600 salaried IT employees, representing more than 10% of its IT department, as part of a strategic workforce transformation toward AI-specific capabilities. The cuts are not permanent headcount reductions but rather a deliberate skills swap, with GM simultaneously hiring for roles in AI-native development, data engineering, cloud engineering, prompt engineering, and model development. The restructuring follows several high-profile AI leadership hires, including Behrad Toghi from Apple as AI lead in October 2025 and Sterling Anderson from Aurora as chief product officer in May 2025. The move signals how enterprise AI adoption is reshaping corporate workforces, with companies rebuilding teams from the ground up rather than simply layering AI tools onto existing staff.

GM IT department layoffs

▪General Motors conducted the IT department layoffs as a deliberate skills swap to clear out workers whose expertise no longer fits and make room for workers with AI-focused backgrounds.
▪General Motors cut about 1,000 software workers in August 2024.
▪General Motors' IT department layoffs are not all permanent headcount reductions, as General Motors is still hiring people for roles in the IT department but for different skills.
▪General Motors laid off more than 10% of General Motors' IT department, or about 600 salaried employees, as of May 12, 2026.

AI-focused hiring strategy

▪General Motors is seeking capabilities in AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows for its IT department.
▪General Motors hired Behrad Toghi, who previously worked at Apple, in October 2025 as AI lead.
▪General Motors brought on Rashed Haq as General Motors' vice president of autonomous vehicles, and Rashed Haq spent five years at Cruise as Cruise's head of AI and robotics.
▪General Motors is looking for people who know how to build with AI from the ground up, including designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines, not just use AI as a productivity tool.

Leadership restructuring

▪In November 2025, three top executives left General Motors' software team as Sterling Anderson pushed to consolidate General Motors' disparate technology businesses into one organization: Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management; Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering; and Barak Turovsky, a former VP at Cisco who spent just nine months as General Motors' chief AI officer.
▪Sterling Anderson, co-founder of the autonomous trucking startup Aurora and a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry, was hired by General Motors in May 2025 as chief product officer.

Enterprise AI workforce transformation

▪General Motors' restructuring is a signal of what enterprise AI adoption actually looks like in practice: not just adding AI tools on top of existing teams, but deliberately rebuilding the workforce from the ground up.
▪The specific capabilities General Motors is hiring for, including agent development, model engineering, and AI-native workflows, point directly at where large-enterprise demand is heading.
▪General Motors has laid off white-collar employees in several departments over the past 18 months as General Motors focuses its resources on high-priority initiatives, including AI.