Visa announced plans to eliminate roughly 2,600 positions, about 7 percent of its global workforce, just hours before reporting blockbuster quarterly earnings, raising hard questions about who actually benefits from the AI revolution.
CEO Ryan McInerney broke the news in an internal memo to staff, telling employees the company "must continue evolving how we work." The cuts land heaviest on Visa's tech and product divisions, the very teams that built the infrastructure the payments giant now says artificial intelligence can handle instead. Hours later, Visa disclosed third-quarter net income of $11.6 billion, a 14 percent jump over the prior year.
The timing is difficult to ignore. Nearly 2,600 workers learned their jobs were disappearing on the same day the company revealed adjusted earnings of $3.32 per share, an 11 percent year-over-year gain, along with a 10 percent rise in payments volume and a 13 percent surge in international transactions. Visa's stock price has climbed 25 percent since the end of March.
McInerney framed the layoffs as forward-looking strategy, not austerity. In his memo, he wrote that "AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa." He added that "as a result of the choices we have made over the past few years, we are entering a new era in commerce with a business that has real momentum."
Momentum, in this case, means a company generating more revenue with fewer people. The layoff announcement arrived not during a downturn or a revenue miss but at a moment of peak financial performance. McInerney himself acknowledged the strength: "Consumer and business spending remains resilient, and our strategy continues to deliver strong performance."
So the strategy delivers strong performance, for shareholders. For the 2,600 employees in tech and product roles, the strategy delivers a box and an exit interview.
Unnamed insiders told CNBC that the job cuts were also part of a broader pivot toward crypto stablecoins, cross-border business payments, and global expansion. If accurate, that means Visa is not merely automating existing work but reshaping its entire business model, and shedding the workforce that served the old one.
Visa is hardly alone. Several of the largest corporations in the country have slashed tens of thousands of jobs in recent months, invoking AI as the justification. Google, Oracle, and Amazon have all made significant cuts. Meta laid off 10 percent of its workforce in May, and Microsoft began offering voluntary buyouts to 7 percent of its U.S. employees in April.
The pattern is consistent: companies post strong or even record earnings, announce ambitious AI strategies, and then cut headcount in the same breath. The savings flow upward to shareholders and executive compensation. The costs flow downward to displaced workers and the communities that depend on their paychecks.
Oracle alone eliminated 21,000 positions over a single year as part of its own AI-driven restructuring. Cisco followed a similar playbook, cutting nearly 4,000 jobs while its stock soared and its CEO's net worth climbed.
Each company tells roughly the same story: AI changes the nature of work, the company must adapt, and adaptation means fewer workers. What none of them explain is why record-setting profits cannot coexist with the people who helped generate them.
The CEO's memo to staff leaned heavily on aspiration. McInerney told employees Visa needed "to capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation." He described AI as an accelerant and commerce as entering "a new era."
What the memo did not address, at least based on what has been disclosed, is whether the 2,600 affected employees will receive severance, what the terms might look like, or whether any retraining programs are planned. The cuts target tech and product divisions, but no specific job titles, sub-departments, or geographic regions have been identified publicly.
That gap matters. When a company earning $11.6 billion in a single quarter tells thousands of employees they are no longer needed, the least it owes them is clarity about what comes next. Corporate memos about "transformation" and "evolution" read differently when you are the one being evolved out of a paycheck.
Other companies that blamed AI for mass layoffs have faced skepticism from investors and the public alike. Visa's stock performance suggests Wall Street, at least, is satisfied. Whether the broader public should be is another question.
Visa's third-quarter numbers tell a story of a company firing on every cylinder. Net income up 14 percent. Earnings per share up 11 percent. Payments volume up 10 percent. International transactions up 13 percent. Share price up 25 percent in under four months.
None of those figures suggest a company under financial pressure. None of them point to a business that needs to shed 7 percent of its workforce to survive. They point to a business that has decided the people who helped build its success are now a line item to optimize.
AI may well reshape how payments companies operate. That is a legitimate business consideration. But when the layoff memo drops hours before a blowout earnings report, the company is not asking anyone to share in sacrifice. It is asking 2,600 people to sacrifice so the quarterly numbers look even better.
Corporate America has found a magic word, "AI", that lets profitable companies cut workers without apology. Visa just proved, again, that the technology revolution's biggest winners have no intention of sharing the gains with the people it displaces.