American Express is cutting 5% of its workforce to 'prepare for AI'

JUST IN: American Express to cut around 5% of its workforce to 'prepare for AI', taking a $336 million restructuring charge. The company had nearly 77,000 employees at the end of 2025.

American Express is cutting five percent of its workforce to prepare for AI.

That's close to four thousand jobs, out of nearly 77,000 employees at the end of last year. CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts on Friday the company is taking a 336 million dollar restructuring charge this quarter, and those charges usually mean one thing, severance cheques.

The language is doing a lot of work here. Squeri says Amex needs to become more agile and efficient to win over the next few years. His finance chief was blunter, telling CNBC you don't want to automate processes that aren't optimally structured, so they're cutting layers first and bringing in the AI after. In plain words, tidy the org chart, then hand the tidy parts to the machines.

Amex isn't struggling, it reported earnings the same morning and talked about good momentum. This is a profitable company trimming people in advance of software. Remember that the next time anyone tells you AI only takes the jobs nobody wanted.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.