Elastic is cutting about 7% of its staff, and its CEO says AI and automation let some teams run leaner

Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch and Kibana, announced on June 24, 2026 that it would reduce its workforce by approximately 7%. In a note to employees published on the company's blog, chief executive Ash Kulkarni wrote that "advances in AI, automation, and technology are reshaping how work gets done, and we're changing with them". He said customer-facing sales teams would keep growing, but "in others, advances in AI and automation are letting us operate with leaner teams", and that engineering, "where the nature of the work is evolving fastest", would be simplified into three core areas reporting directly to him. Elastic's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission describes the plan as aligning its teams "with working in an age of AI automation" and puts the one-time charges at about $22 million to $25 million, mostly severance. Its quarterly report filed in late August recorded $19.9 million of those charges and said the cuts should be substantially complete by the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2027. Elastic has not said how many people are affected, and says it still expects total headcount to grow this fiscal year.