Visa plans to lay off some 2,600 workers as the company seeks to adapt to sweeping changes brought on by artificial intelligence.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco-based global payments giant confirmed the cuts, representing about 7% of its 34,000 workers, in an email to CoStar News. The company said the reductions would mainly be aimed at the firm's product and technology teams.
CEO Ryan McInerney told employees of the planned reductions in a memo Tuesday, saying Visa needed to become more efficient and shift resources toward businesses it views as having greater growth potential amid a rapidly shifting payments landscape.
“I have deep conviction that we are doing what is right for Visa, our clients and our partners as we continue to focus on driving efficiency across the company in order to reinvest in our highest potential opportunities,” McInerney told employees in the circulated memo. “To capture the opportunities ahead and best position to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work.
“AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa,” McInerney said.
It was not clear how many employees would be affected at the company’s San Francisco headquarters or at the firm's campus about 25 miles south in Foster City, which houses many of the firm's tech and product workers.
Anchor tenant
Visa opened its global headquarters at the bayfront Mission Rock development in San Francisco with much fanfare in 2024, moving nearly 1,000 workers into the 13-story, 300,000 square foot Building G at 300 Toni Stone Xing.
The credit card giant was the anchor office tenant at Mission Rock, a partnership between New York-based developer Tishman Speyer and the San Francisco Giants baseball team to redevelop 28 acres of vacant land on Pier 48 near the Bay Bridge — and overlooking the Giants stadium — into a mixed-use neighborhood with some 1.4 million square feet of office space, 200,000 square feet of retail and 1,200 homes.
Mission Rock was a rare bright spot in San Francisco during the post-pandemic years when the city had the highest office vacancy rate in the nation.
Today the city's economy has come roaring back thanks to the artificial intelligence boom, which has infused the city with hordes of young tech workers and sent housing costs soaring.
But the Visa layoffs illustrate a widening divide that's emerged in the nation's tech hub, where a handful of AI engineers are landing breathtaking compensation packages while other rank-and-file tech workers have struggled to find work.
Since 2022, a total of 836,511 tech workers have been given pink slips, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
Industry job cuts
Affected workers at Visa were expected to begin receiving layoff notifications Tuesday.
Visa had about three times as many workers at the close of the last fiscal year as a decade earlier. Many of its fintech competitors have announced even deeper job cuts in recent months, including PayPal and Block, which have each laid off several thousand workers this year.
In January, Mastercard announced about 1,500 job cuts, about 4% of its workforce. Like Visa, Mastercard at the time cited the need to reinvest in other, more strategic areas.
From January to May, U.S. technology companies announced 123,653 cuts, up 66% from the same period last year, according to a June report from global executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm said artificial intelligence was the leading reason companies cited for cutting workers, though it has not yet developed into the “jobpocalypse some predicted.”
Meta, Snap, Block, Oracle and Amazon are among the tech companies that have announced mass layoffs this year.
"The open question isn’t whether AI changes the workforce, but how fast," the report said.