GM lays off hundreds of IT workers to hire AI specialists

General Motors has cut over 10% of its IT workforce—roughly 600 salaried employees—as part of a deliberate skills shift: phasing out workers whose expertise no longer aligns and bringing in people with AI-focused backgrounds.

GM confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch; Bloomberg News first reported the move.

In a statement sent via email, the automaker described the cuts as part of preparing for the future, without offering specifics. “GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future,” the company said.

Not all of these layoffs represent permanent headcount reductions. A person familiar with the situation told TechCrunch that GM continues to hire for IT roles—but with a different skill set in mind. The most in-demand capabilities include AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. In practice, GM is looking for people who can build with AI from scratch—designing systems, training models, and engineering pipelines—rather than simply using AI as a productivity tool.

Over the past 18 months, GM has laid off white-collar workers across several departments as it concentrates resources on high-priority initiatives, including AI. In August 2024, for example, the company cut about 1,000 software employees.

The software workforce has seen major changes since Sterling Anderson—co-founder of autonomous trucking startup Aurora and a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry—joined as chief product officer in May 2025. Last November, three top executives left GM’s software team as Anderson pushed to consolidate the company’s fragmented technology businesses into a single 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 Cisco VP who spent just nine months as GM’s chief AI officer.

GM has since moved to fill the gap with new AI-focused hires. In October, it brought on Behrad Toghi, a former Apple employee, as AI lead. The company also hired Rashed Haq as vice president of autonomous vehicles. Haq spent five years at Cruise—the self-driving company that GM acquired and later shut down—as head of AI and robotics.

For the broader industry, GM’s restructuring signals what enterprise AI adoption actually looks like in practice—not just layering AI tools on top of existing teams, but deliberately rebuilding the workforce from the ground up. The specific capabilities GM is hiring for—agent development, model engineering, AI-native workflows—point directly to where large-enterprise demand is heading.