American Express is cutting 5% of its staff to get ready for AI

American Express is cutting 5% of its global workforce, and its finance chief says a big part of the reason is to get the company ready for AI. Chief executive Stephen Squeri announced the cuts on Friday’s third-quarter earnings call, as the card company booked a $336 million restructuring charge in its quarterly results.

Amex had almost 77,000 employees at the end of 2025, so 5% works out at roughly 3,800 jobs. The company has not said which teams, roles or countries will be hit, or how quickly the cuts will happen.

What Amex announced

The results filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission put the pre-tax restructuring charge at $336 million, or $253 million after tax, and describe it as “restructuring related to efficiency initiatives”. Amex is paying for it with part of a $982 million gain from selling its stake in corporate travel firm Global Business Travel Group.

The cuts come in a strong quarter. Amex reported record third-quarter revenue of $20.1 billion, up 9% on a year earlier, and net income of $3.7 billion. It also raised its full-year earnings guidance to between $18.30 and $18.60 a share.

Squeri told analysts the company needed to change shape to keep that going. “We’ve got good momentum, but to accelerate innovation and win over the next few years, we needed to become [a] more agile and efficient organization,” he said, according to CNBC, adding that the exercise would give Amex “greater capacity to invest in our business priorities”.

‘You don’t want to automate processes that are not optimally structured’

Chief financial officer Christophe Le Caillec was more direct about AI. He told CNBC the charge was to make American Express “leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI”, and explained the thinking:

You don’t want to automate processes that are not optimally structured. So what we’re doing here is to reduce layers and increase spans of controls, so that we can automate and take advantage of AI in the coming quarters and the coming years.

Christophe Le Caillec, chief financial officer, American Express, to CNBC

In other words, the first round of cuts targets layers of management, with automation to follow once the structure is flatter. Le Caillec did not say how many more jobs that later automation might affect.

From ‘attrition’ to cuts in three months

The message is a shift from July. On the company’s second-quarter call, Squeri said AI was helping Amex get through a backlog of technology work faster, but that its effect on jobs would come slowly. Speaking about customer service staff, he said “the number of reps hasn’t grown. Over time it will decrease from attrition,” American Banker reported. He called it a very early stage for the technology: “It’s not even early innings yet, it’s the preseason.”

Amex has been building AI into its products at the same time. Friday’s results list new Resy restaurant booking integrations, including one with OpenAI, and an “Intent Intelligence” framework for what the company calls trusted agentic commerce, where AI agents shop and pay on a customer’s behalf. The filing also names “the adoption of artificial intelligence” and “agentic technologies” among the risks that could affect its business.

Banks are moving the same way

Amex is the second big financial company in two days to tie job cuts to AI. On Thursday Barclays said it would cut about 5,000 jobs this year, also around 5% of its staff, citing “technology change efficiency driven by AI”, with developers among the roles going.

Elsewhere the picture is mixed. Apple drew up plans to replace 5,000 AppleCare support staff with AI agents before putting them on hold, and Anthropic’s own data shows junior technical hiring falling sharply as its AI agents take on more of the work.

Why it matters

Most companies cutting staff still talk about efficiency and leave AI out of it. Amex’s finance chief said plainly that removing management layers now is meant to clear the way for automation later, which suggests these 3,800 or so jobs may not be the last.

Sources: American Express Q3 2026 results (SEC filing); CNBC (Le Caillec interview, Squeri call remarks); American Banker (July earnings call).