GM just laid off hundreds of IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills
General Motors has laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees — in a deliberate skills swap: clearing out workers whose expertise no longer fits and making room for some with AI-focused backgrounds. GM confirmed to TechCrunch that it had conducted layoffs; they were firstreportedby Bloomberg News. In an emailed statement, the automaker framed the layoffs as a means to prepare it for the future, without providing specifics. “GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future,” the company said. These layoffs are not all permanent headcount reductions. A person familiar with the layoffs told TechCrunch that the company is still hiring people for roles in its IT department, but for different skills. The most sought-after capabilities are AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, and agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. In practical terms, GM is looking for people who know how to build with AI from the ground up — designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines — not just use AI as a productivity tool. GM has laid off white-collar employees in several departments over the past 18 months, as it focuses its resources on high-priority initiatives, including AI. In August 2024, for example, the company cut about1,000 software workers. The software workforce has undergone significant change since Sterling Anderson — co-founder of the autonomous trucking startup Aurora and a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry — was hired in May 2025 aschief product officer. Last November,three top executivesleft the company’s software team as Anderson pushed to consolidate GM’s 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 GM’s chief AI officer. GM has since moved to fill the gap with new AI-focused hires. It hired Behrad Toghi, who previously worked at Apple, in October as AI lead. The company also brought on Rashed Haq as its vice president of autonomous vehicles. Haq spent five years at Cruise — the self-driving vehicle company acquired and later shuttered by GM — as its head of AI and robotics. For the industry, GM's 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 it's hiring for -- agent development, model engineering, AI-native workflows -- point directly at where large-enterprise demand is heading.
