"This is part of the company's strategy to accelerate innovation in our most critical growth areas, including GenAI driven 'done for you' experiences across all of our products, embedding AI in all our customer experiences. It will also enable us to innovate to help our customers manage their money end-to-end, accelerate our midmarket offerings for companies with 10 to 100 employees, and accelerate Intuit's international growth," said a spokesperson from Intuit.
Among those laid off are 1,050 employees who Intuit said are not meeting expectations and who they believe will be more successful outside of Intuit. Added to this are 10% of the company's executive team, 250 people in the company's Edmonton, Alberta, and Boise, Idaho, sites, which will be closed down, and 300 other employees across the company in order to streamline work and reallocate resources toward key growth areas.
"Today is an incredibly difficult day and our hearts go out to all of you who are leaving Intuit. We sincerely thank you for all you have done for the company. We know you will continue to make a significant impact and achieve great success in your next chapter," said Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi in an email to staff announcing the move.
Intuit said this is not a cost-cutting move, as the company actually expects its overall headcount to grow in fiscal year 2025 and beyond, starting with hiring about 1,800 new people primarily in engineering, product, and customer-facing roles such as sales, customer success, and marketing.
These new staff will support Intuit's plans to accelerate investments in generative AI. For one, the company plans to use its proprietary "GenOS" to shift its products from traditional workflows to AI-native experiences. They are planning to hire additional engineers to support this push.
They also plan to use data and AI to more effectively match customers to the "right" experts in real time to provide the specific, personalized assistance. To advance this area, they plan to hire additional specialist talent to bolster its expert network teams as well as marketing talent with deep expertise in digital services.
The company also announced plans to bolster its fintech offerings by furthering investments in seamless payments, capital, banking, bill pay, and invoicing solutions across several geographies. They are hiring additional fintech talent in engineering, design, risk, and customer success to support this effort.
Intuit also plans to focus more on the mid-market customer through things such as sophisticated accounting and reporting capabilities, money solutions, human capital management, and customer acquisition solutions with Mailchimp, all assisted by AI-powered human experts. To achieve this goal, they are accelerating hiring talent with deep midmarket customer experience in product, account management, marketing, sales, and customer success.
They are also planning to further expand into Europe and other jurisdictions.
"The era of AI is one of the most significant technology shifts of our lifetime. Intuit was early to bet on and invest in AI, building one of the largest AI-driven expert platforms to fuel the success of consumers, small and midmarket businesses, and important partners like accountants, financial institutions, and marketing agencies who rely on us daily to prosper. The changes we are making enable us to allocate additional investments to our most critical areas to support our customers and drive growth," said the Intuit spokesperson.
