SUSE sheds a tenth of its workforce and points to AI
The Linux company, owned by investor EQT, is laying off roughly one in ten of its approximately 1,900 employees after too few people left voluntarily.
SUSE is to lay off around 10 percent of its global workforce of some 1,900 people. Chief executive Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen announced this on Monday in an email to staff that The Register was able to see. He points to automation and AI: modern tools are changing how work is done and making some existing roles less necessary. According to management, the current organisation and cost base do not fit the company's future.
The employees concerned will be informed by 4 November at the latest, after which staff representatives will be appointed and one-to-one meetings will begin the following week. On 16 November, the rest of the company will be shown the strategy for fiscal year 2027. In September, SUSE had already offered long-serving staff a voluntary separation scheme, but too few people took it up, The Register and AI Weekly report. In the Czech Republic, SUSE employees belong to a trade union.
SUSE has been owned since 2018 by the Swedish investment firm EQT, which bought it from Micro Focus for 2.5 billion dollars at the time, listed it in Frankfurt in 2021 and took it private again in 2023. In March, EQT was reportedly considering selling SUSE once more. The company did not say which roles will disappear.