India's IT giant sheds 12,000 jobs as clients hand outsourced work to AI

Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT services company, said it will cut about 2% of its global workforce, around 12,200 jobs, in its 2026 financial year. The cuts fall mainly on middle and senior management. TCS employs about 613,000 people and described the move as part of a "future-ready transformation" in which staff are retrained and redeployed toward AI-driven services. "This transition is being planned with due care to ensure there is no impact on service delivery to our clients," the company said. Gulf News reports that the decision followed one of the company's weakest first quarters since the pandemic, with constant-currency revenue down 3.1% in the three months to June, and that chief executive K. Krithivasan acknowledged high single-digit growth may stay out of reach as clients defer new projects. Analysts cited in the report say widespread adoption of AI is starting to disrupt the people-heavy model Indian IT services was built on, and that some clients are pressing for price cuts of 20-30% on new contracts. It is only the second large cut in the company's history; the first, in 2012, removed about 2,500 people for underperformance. In the statement quoted, TCS ties the cuts to its own restructuring; the link to AI taking over outsourced work is drawn by analysts.