General Motors Lays Off Hundreds of IT Workers to Hire for AI Skills General Motors’ latest round of white-collar cuts reveals a stark tradeoff: traditional IT roles are being eliminated as the automaker races to rebuild its tech backbone around artificial intelligence.

Early restructuring and leadership shake-up

Over the past 18 months, GM has repeatedly trimmed salaried staff in software and IT while steering more investment toward high-priority tech initiatives, including AI. In August 2024, the company cut about 1,000 software workers as part of a broader reorganization of its software operations. The shift accelerated after May 2025, when autonomous-vehicle veteran Sterling Anderson joined as chief product officer and began consolidating GM’s disparate technology businesses into a single organization, prompting the departure of three top software executives later that year.

The May 2026 “skills swap” at GM

By May 11, 2026, the reshaping crystallized in a major IT shake-up: GM laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees, in what insiders describe as a “deliberate skills swap” aimed at clearing out roles whose expertise “no longer fits” and making room for workers with stronger AI backgrounds. The company says it is “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future,” while continuing to hire for AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, and agent and model development, including prompt engineering and new AI workflows.

Industry analysts note this won’t be a one-for-one exchange, warning of a likely net job loss even as GM insists it is recruiting new talent. Across Detroit, Ford, GM, and Stellantis have together cut more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs—about 19% of their combined white-collar workforce—from recent peaks, a trend “generally connected to technological changes, including AI.”

Broader automotive AI race

By May 17, 2026, GM’s moves were being framed as part of an “AI skills arms race” sweeping the auto sector, where AI is “creating jobs for some at the loss of others.” Companies are seeking engineers who can “build with AI from the ground up — designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines — not just use AI as a productivity tool.”

At the same time, AI is reshaping how vehicles are driven. Elon Musk recently amplified a prediction that “10 years from now, probably 90% of all distance driven will be driven by the AI in a self-driving car,” suggesting that human driving could become “quite a niche thing” and noting that AI already handles “90%+ of the miles” he travels. That vision underscores why automakers like GM are racing to retool their workforces—but for many traditional IT workers, the future may arrive as a layoff notice before it looks like opportunity.

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