Freshworks cut about 500 jobs and its chief executive says its systems now handle work that once took several teams

Freshworks, the customer-service software company, told the SEC on 5 May 2026 that it would cut "approximately 500 employees globally, representing approximately 11% of the Company's global workforce", under a plan to streamline the organisation and "increase leverage of AI and automation across the business". Chief executive Dennis Woodside's note to staff, published on the company's own site, sets out three reasons, and two of them are about machines doing the work. "We've invested heavily in technology, systems, and AI to work more efficiently. Our systems can now handle many of the manual tasks and fragmented handoffs that once required multiple teams to manage," he wrote. And in engineering: "over half of all code being AI-generated or AI-assisted during the development and testing processes." The third reason is a consolidation of sales, marketing and support. Freshworks gives no split, so not all 500 can be laid at AI's door. The company sells AI agents that answer customers' support tickets. It is now describing its own management layers in the same terms.