Linux vendor SUSE is cutting about 10% of its global workforce, with CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen telling staff that “automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate.” The news came in an internal memo sent on Monday and seen by The Register.
“We are announcing a reduction of SUSE’s global workforce of approximately 10 percent,” the former Red Hat executive, who joined SUSE in March 2023, wrote in an email to the company’s 1,900-strong workforce. “These decisions are painful for our people, our culture, and our open source community, but they are necessary for us to adapt and build a sustainable, resilient SUSE for the long term.”
The memo frames the cuts as a response to how AI is changing the economics of building software. “What is clear is that automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate,” van Leeuwen wrote. “We have seen this trend already both inside our sector and in the wider economy. This means that the organizational design and cost base that SUSE is built on today will not carry us forward successfully.”
A data center server room. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Flatter teams, fewer roles
Across the company, “modern tooling is already changing our daily workflows,” the CEO said, enabling teams to move faster with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines. “The requirement for some existing roles has greatly diminished,” he added, noting that other roles will evolve over the next few years. SUSE is accelerating investment in high-priority areas while deprioritizing others.
The specific roles at risk were not outlined, though the company says it assessed where people could evolve, what they could stop doing and what they needed to do more of. Staff affected by the redundancies will be informed by November 4, employee representatives will be nominated the following day, and one-to-one meetings begin at the start of next week.
A long road to the cuts
The SUSE layoffs did not come out of nowhere. SUSE was bought by Swedish private equity firm EQT from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in 2018, floated on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2021, and taken private again in 2023. In March, EQT was reportedly considering selling the company once more. In September, SUSE asked long-serving employees if they would take “voluntary separation,” apparently without enough takers.
There is irony in the announcement: as The Register noted, SUSE itself doubled down on AI in 2025, positioning its products around the technology wave. Now the company says that same wave is shrinking the organization that builds the products. The rest of the organization will get its first look at SUSE’s fiscal year 2027 strategy on November 16.
SUSE cuts at a glance. Graphic: GPTOnline.
