General Motors cuts about 600 IT jobs

General Motors has laid off roughly 600 salaried employees in its information technology department, more than 10% of the unit, as it reshapes the group around AI-focused skills. TechCrunch reports the cuts were first reported by Bloomberg and later confirmed by GM, which described the move as part of transforming its IT organisation for the future. GM says the change is not purely a headcount reduction: it is still hiring, but for different roles.

The job descriptions point to what large enterprises now think “AI adoption” actually requires. GM is seeking staff for AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows, according to TechCrunch. The emphasis is on building systems—designing architectures, training models, and engineering pipelines—rather than adding an AI tool to existing processes. That distinction matters because it shifts spending away from software licences and toward internal capability, while also making the company more dependent on a smaller set of specialised employees who can keep models running, monitored, and updated.

The layoffs sit inside a longer reshuffle. Over the past 18 months GM has reduced white-collar staffing in multiple departments to concentrate resources on higher-priority initiatives including AI, TechCrunch writes. In August 2024 the company cut about 1,000 software workers. Since May 2025, when Sterling Anderson was hired as chief product officer, the software workforce has been in flux; Anderson is a co-founder of autonomous trucking startup Aurora and has worked in the autonomous vehicle sector.

Management churn has followed. TechCrunch notes that in November three senior executives left the software team, including Baris Cetinok, Dave Richardson, and Barak Turovsky, who had served as chief AI officer for nine months. GM has since brought in new AI-focused leadership, including Behrad Toghi as an AI lead in October, and Rashed Haq as vice president of autonomous vehicles after his work at Cruise, the self-driving company GM acquired and later shut down.

For employees, the message is that “IT” is being redefined from keeping systems running to producing models and automation that can replace parts of the workflow. For GM, the near-term cost is severance and disruption; the longer-term bet is that the company can hire scarce AI talent fast enough to justify cutting people whose systems still have to operate every day.

GM says it is still hiring for IT roles. The layoffs remove the staff who knew the old stack while the company shops for the people meant to rebuild it.