SUSE to cut about 10% of jobs as CEO cites AI, The Register reports

SUSE, the German Linux company founded in 1992, is cutting about 10% of its workforce. Chief executive Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen told staff on Monday that AI and automation are changing how software companies work.

Liam Proven reported the cuts for The Register, which saw the internal memo. SUSE has more than 1,900 employees, according to its owner, the Swedish private equity firm EQT. That puts the cuts at around 190 people. SUSE has not posted a statement about them in its newsroom.

“What is clear is that automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate,” van Leeuwen wrote.

He wrote that the company’s current structure and cost base will not carry it forward. Modern tooling already lets teams move faster with less overhead and flatter reporting lines, he said.

“The requirement for some existing roles has greatly diminished,” van Leeuwen wrote.

The memo did not say which roles will go. SUSE will tell the staff affected by 4 November, The Register reported. Employee representatives will be nominated the next day, and one-to-one meetings start next week. The rest of the company will see the strategy for fiscal year 2027 on 16 November.

Van Leeuwen called the decisions painful for SUSE’s people, its culture and its open source community. He told staff the cuts reflect changing needs, not their talent or commitment.

In September, The Register reported that SUSE had asked long-serving staff whether they would take voluntary separation.

Van Leeuwen, a former Red Hat executive, joined SUSE in 2023. EQT bought the Nuremberg company from Micro Focus in 2018 for $2.5bn. It listed SUSE in Frankfurt in 2021 and took it private again in 2023. In March, Reuters reported that EQT was considering selling it.

On 27 October, SUSE announced new agentic AI capabilities for its Linux management tools.

Former SUSE employee Christian Brauner reacted on Mastodon.

“It’s sad that this pointless churn in the name of profit maximizing keeps happening to a great company,” Brauner wrote.

Other employers have tied job cuts to AI in recent weeks. The Netherlands plans to cut 25,000 government jobs. Barclays is cutting 5,000 bank jobs, and American Express is cutting 5% of staff.

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