SUSE Layoffs Hit 10% of Staff as CEO Points to AI and Automation

SUSE layoffs will cut about 10% of the Linux company’s global workforce, or roughly 190 of its 1,900 employees, CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen told staff in an internal memo on Monday, November 2, 2026. He said “automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate,” and that some existing roles are no longer needed.

The memo was first reported by The Register, which said it was sent to the whole workforce. The memo did not say which roles or countries are affected.

Why SUSE says AI is behind the layoffs

Van Leeuwen, a former Red Hat executive who became CEO in 2023, said the company reviewed its strategy, required skills and team structures before making the decision. “AI capabilities are advancing exponentially, forcing us to radically reimagine our work,” he wrote, adding that the “organizational design and cost base that SUSE is built on today will not carry us forward successfully.”

According to the memo, “modern tooling” is already changing daily workflows at SUSE, letting teams move faster with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines. Some roles will “evolve over the next few years,” while the company shifts investment toward high-priority areas and drops others.

The CEO called the cuts “painful for our people, our culture, and our open source community,” and said they reflect “shifting organizational needs, not your talent or commitment.”

Timeline for affected employees

• November 4: employees whose roles are affected will be informed.
• November 5: employee representatives will be nominated.
• Next week: one-to-one meetings with affected staff begin.
• November 16: SUSE will present its fiscal year 2027 strategy to the rest of the company.

The job cuts follow a voluntary separation and early retirement offer that SUSE made to eligible employees in September. According to The Register, that offer did not draw enough takers. Staff at SUSE’s Prague office formed a union earlier this year.

What it means for SUSE and the wider industry

Founded in Nuremberg, Germany, SUSE makes SUSE Linux Enterprise and the Rancher Kubernetes platform, and sponsors the openSUSE community distributions used widely in enterprise servers and data centers. Swedish private equity firm EQT bought SUSE in 2018 for $2.5 billion, listed it in Frankfurt in 2021 and took it private again in 2023. EQT was reportedly considering selling the company again earlier this year.

SUSE is the latest tech company to tie job cuts directly to AI. Microsoft recently offered voluntary severance packages to 60,000 employees, while AI labs keep spending heavily on computing power.

The same tools are also reshaping Linux work itself. Anthropic’s Claude model recently built a remote root exploit for Linux servers in 53 minutes, and Anthropic’s revenue hit $17 billion in the third quarter as businesses pay for AI coding and automation.