By Sameer Manekar and Roshan Thomas<\/p>\n
Feb 25 (Reuters) – Australian software company WiseTech Global will axe about 2,000 jobs, nearly a third of its global workforce, in a two\u2011year restructuring that could \u200crank among the country’s largest artificial intelligence-linked job cuts.<\/p>\n
WiseTech, which makes shipping and logistics management software, \u200con Wednesday said it plans to integrate AI into its customer software as well as internal operations, affecting around 29% of its global \u200bworkforce of around 7,000 people across 40 countries.<\/p>\n
The layoffs highlight how AI is reshaping workplaces globally, as companies adopt automation tools for routine administrative work as well as complex coding tasks that the systems are handling with increasing speed and precision.<\/p>\n
Some projects that once took six or seven months can already be completed in a day, said WiseTech \u200cChief Executive Officer Zubin Appoo.<\/p>\n
Rolling out global \u2060customs 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 added.<\/p>\n
Appoo said WiseTech \u2060workers who dealt with customers directly or chased sales would still require plenty of person-to-person contact.<\/p>\n
PROFITS BEAT ESTIMATES<\/p>\n
The cuts could shrink some teams by half, starting with product and development, and customer service roles across the organisation. One of the \u200bdivisions \u200baffected will be WiseTech’s U.S. cloud computing arm, E2open, acquired \u200bin August for $2.1 billion, which may see cuts \u200cof up to 50%.<\/p>\n
Last month, Amazon announced 16,000 job cuts worldwide in a second round of redundancies at the tech giant in three months, adding to a wave of redundancies by U.S. companies across sectors this year.<\/p>\n
“The era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” Appoo said.<\/p>\n
Shares of WiseTech, which also announced an estimate-beating first-half profit, closed 11.1% higher at A$47.74, while Australia’s benchmark S&P ASX 200 index rose 1.2%.<\/p>\n
WiseTech, \u200cfounded more than three decades ago, reported first-half underlying net profit \u200bof $114.5 million, 6% ahead of market consensus, and announced an interim \u200bdividend of 6.8 cents while reaffirming its full-year \u200boutlook.<\/p>\n
Despite the day’s surge, WiseTech’s shares remain 68% below their November 2024 peak, as \u200callegations surrounding founder and former CEO Richard White, \u200bincluding claims of payments to \u200ban alleged former lover, fuelled an investor exodus. Concerns around how AI would affect the software maker also kept the stock under pressure.<\/p>\n
“Recent share price weakness was more governance-driven than fundamental and with the \u200bfiscal 2026 guidance reaffirmed, the underlying \u200ctrajectory remains sustainable despite near-term disruption,” said Marc Jocum, senior product and investment strategist at Global \u200bX ETFs.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Roshan Thomas; Editing by Maju Samuel, \u200bShinjini Ganguli, Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Mrigank Dhaniwala and Kate Mayberry)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sameer Manekar and Roshan Thomas Feb 25 (Reuters) – Australian software company WiseTech Global will axe about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,147702,129160,61,60,80,147568,147567],"class_list":["post-316601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-australian-software-company","tag-global-workforce","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology","tag-wisetech","tag-zubin-appoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}