Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back sharply against the growing corporate practice of citing AI as the primary cause of job cuts, calling the framing “just too lazy” in an interview with Singapore broadcaster CNA on May 25. Huang questioned the basic timeline: generative AI tools only recently became practical enough for widespread enterprise use, he argued, making it implausible that earlier rounds of layoffs were driven by AI displacement. He said he hates seeing executives “blaming layoffs on AI to sound smart” and added, “we’re scaring people and that’s irresponsible.” Instead, he called for a “balanced narrative” that pairs acknowledgment of risks with optimism about AI’s economic potential, saying leaders should “tell a story that’s optimistic so that people want to be part of it.”
The comments land amid a wave of high-profile tech layoffs explicitly linked to AI efficiency gains: Meta is reportedly preparing to eliminate roughly 15,000 employees — about 20% of its global workforce — while simultaneously doubling its AI budget to $135 billion in 2026; Amazon cut 16,000 corporate roles in January citing automation; and Microsoft shed more than 15,000 positions in 2025 while committing $80 billion to AI infrastructure. A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research published earlier this year estimated roughly 502,000 AI-attributed job cuts by year-end, a ninefold jump from about 55,000 in 2025. Huang, whose customers include all three companies, has previously gone further, telling CNBC’s Jim Cramer that executives who respond to AI by shrinking headcount rather than expanding ambitions are simply “out of imagination.”