GitLab is laying off employees and restructuring its entire organization to chase the AI agents gold rush. CEO Bill Staples framed the move as a strategic reinvestment, channeling the savings from workforce reductions into what the company calls an “AI agents push.”
The company is reorganizing its R&D division into 60 teams, flattening management layers, and cutting its operational footprint by 30%.
What GitLab is actually doing
GitLab plans to deploy AI agents internally to automate reviews, approvals, and other processes that currently require human judgment. The idea is that by dogfooding its own AI tools, GitLab can refine them before selling them to its customer base of software development teams.
The bigger picture: AI as the justification for layoffs
