IONOS job cuts: about 450 full-time roles to go, mostly through voluntary exits, with AI in internal workflows as one lever

IONOS plans to cut about 450 full-time jobs, shrinking from roughly 3,800 to 3,350, in a transformation program that includes consistent use of AI in internal workflows. The German web-hosting and cloud company announced the plan in an ad hoc release on 10 September 2026. It says the reduction is split roughly equally between domestic and international operations and is to be carried out primarily through voluntary redundancy programs, developed with employee representatives. The program pairs platform and process consolidation with "the consistent use of artificial intelligence in internal workflows", and IONOS expects annual savings of up to EUR 30 million from 2027, depending on how many staff take voluntary terms, against one-time costs of about EUR 35 million, mostly in the fourth quarter of 2026. Part of the savings will be reinvested, including in AI product development. The release lists AI as one lever among several and does not say it is doing the work of the roles being removed, so the cut stays out of our AI layoffs tracker. It belongs with a growing group of European tech employers that name AI in their restructuring plans without saying how much of the job reduction it accounts for.