(Bloomberg) — WiseTech Global Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Zubin Appoo said artificial intelligence-fueled savings will ultimately cut through the entire company, hours after the freight-software provider announced plans to ax almost 30% of staff within two years.
“We will look at all functions of the business,” Appoo said in an interview Wednesday. “I have a strong view that AI and large language models will drive productivity across all of those functions. I can’t tell you whether that’s 50% or 70% or 30%.”
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Some projects that once took six or seven months can already be completed in a day, Appoo said. Rolling out global customs capability in a new country, which previously took as long as two years, can be done six or seven times faster thanks to AI, he said.
Appoo’s plans to eliminate 2,000 roles — from a total workforce of around 7,000 — under the AI-driven revamp represent the largest cuts of their kind in Australia. While tech titans including Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to embrace AI, few are slashing as early, or as deep, as Sydney-based WiseTech.
In a candid and full-blooded embrace of AI, Appoo laid out what he said were unprecedented benefits for WiseTech. “This marks one of the most important inflection points in our 30-plus year history,” he said earlier on a post-earnings call.
AI means greater productivity, in less time, from fewer people, he said. The company’s cost base will be stripped bare and the economics of software development reshaped. In some parts of the workforce such as customer service, one in two workers will disappear, Appoo added.
“I am prepared to say this clearly: the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” Appoo said. AI is “unlocking levels of efficiency gains across WiseTech that were previously out of reach.”
WiseTech shares jumped as much as 11% in Sydney trading on Wednesday. Before today’s rebound, the stock had slumped 37% this year, hammered by concerns that artificial intelligence will make the company’s freight-software redundant.
The mass job cuts come just days after a little known firm called Citrini Research reignited the “AI scare trade” by mapping out a hypothetical future scenario that included large-scale AI-led corporate disruption, mass unemployment, software-backed loan defaults and economic contraction.
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Appoo said WiseTech workers who deal with customers or chase sales still require plenty of person-to-person contact. But companies the world over are increasingly citing AI as a driver that allows them to eliminate staff and reduce hiring. Software developers could be among those most impacted, with advanced AI capable of handling tasks such as coding that have been traditionally performed by people.
In the UK, companies reported that AI led to 8% net job losses over the past year, a Morgan Stanley study showed last month. It was the highest level in a group that included German, American, Japanese and Australian firms.
During WiseTech’s conference call, Appoo said AI would allow WiseTech to offer more value, and to embed its products deeper into customers’ operations. The job cuts will be made this fiscal year and next.
His presentation, also released Wednesday, depicted a future in which people with specialist skills and knowledge are still key, but with swarms of AI agents overseen by humans.
WiseTech creates software that helps companies from shippers to logistics firms plan and manage the flow of goods around the world, from tracking containers to dealing with customs.
Appoo did concede that AI threatens other software businesses that charge by the number of users, but that the risk didn’t apply to WiseTech. The company’s software is at the center of global trade and logistics and can’t itself be replaced, he said. “It’s not an overlay.”
Under what WiseTech calls a “deep AI transformation,” workers in product and development, and customer service, will be the first to go, including at US-based E2open, which WiseTech bought last year in its biggest-ever acquisition.
Underlying net profit climbed 2% to A$114.5 million ($81 million) in the six months ended Dec. 31. Total revenue was up 76% to A$672 million, including a five-month contribution from E2open. On an organic basis, sales grew 7%.
Before AI-related fears smashed WiseTech stock, the company had also endured a tumultuous period of allegations, first raised in late 2024, about the conduct of then-CEO and founder Richard White.
Appoo was named CEO in July last year partly to address investors’ governance concerns. White is now WiseTech’s chairman.
–With assistance from Ville Heiskanen.
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