The AI firing spree

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Jun 4, 2026, 5:24:27 PM (4 days ago) Jun 4

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US tech companies last month announced the most employee terminations in almost two years amid an increasingly frenzied AI spending spree. Plans were unveiled in May to eliminate more than 38,000 positions, the most in the sector since August 2024. So far this year, the industry has announced more than 123,000 cuts, up more than 65% from the same period in 2025.

“The labor market is being reshaped by technology in real time,” said Andy Challenger of outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs.”

The (potential) good news? Those firms are promising more hiring than any other sector. More broadly, US employers overall have announced more than 80,000 planned hires so far this year, which is better than 2024 and 2025, but still well below totals for the same period in each year from 2019 to 2023.

—David E. Rovella

What You Need to Know Today

It might have seemed like the bubbling crisis in private markets had subsided, given the dearth of headlines in April and May. Not quite.

As the calendar turned to June 2, the drumbeat of dread resumed with Cliffwater’s flagship $31 billion private credit fund disclosing that investors wanted to yank 17% in the second quarter. Then Swiss firm Partners Group Holding capped withdrawals at one of its evergreen private equity funds, adding that it’s ready to gate other funds — including in the US.

The $1.8 trillion private credit industry has found assuaging investor angst about the market is more marathon than sprint — and that some see a grim horizon. “The disease,” said Pierre-Yves Gauthier, chief executive at AlphaValue, “is spreading.”

Wall Street heavyweight Jane Street says it plans to build and finance its own data center.

Since 2000, it’s built out operations for handling thousands of trades within seconds like other high-frequency shops, while also profiting from holding some positions for hours, days and even weeks. The market-maker handles investors’ trades and also makes wagers with its own money.

Its pursuit of a data center is less aligned with private equity’s style of investing in AI infrastructure, and more about building one for its own use. The firm could use the facility to train internal artificial intelligence models for functions like predicting the future price of assets, for example.

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A surge in electricity demand from AI and data centers is reshaping North America’s power markets, creating a “renaissance” for natural gas after decades of limited new development, said KKR partner Brandon Freiman.

Publicly traded power producers such as Vistra, Constellation Energy, NRG Energy and Talen Energy have already benefited from owning generation in a market where electricity demand and prices are rising.

“It’s become one of the clearer ways to express an AI bet on infrastructure,” Freiman said. Investors do not need to pick the winning AI model or semiconductor company, he explained, since “they’re going to need more power.”

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LS Power is said to be in advanced talks to buy Electricite de France’s North American renewable power business. The unit had 6.1 gigawatts of solar and wind in operations in the US, Canada and Mexico at the end of last year.

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There were no signs of progress in ceasefire talks after renewed violence in the conflict. At least four people died in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, where more than 3,500 people have already been killed.

The US Supreme Court reinforced the Securities and Exchange Commission’s power to recover illegal profits in a case that centered on one of the agency’s most potent enforcement tools.

The justices ruled unanimously Thursday that the SEC doesn’t have to show identifiable investor harm in order to win “disgorgement” from people and firms found to have violated securities laws. The ruling will shape a wide range of SEC cases in which victims aren’t easy to pinpoint, from low-profile record-keeping violations to major insider trading allegations.

Michael Saylor, chairman and chief executive officer at MicroStrategy, during an interview at the Bitcoin 2023 conference in Miami Beach, Florida, US, on Thursday, May 18, 2023. The three-day conference is touted by organizers as "the biggest annual celebration of Bitcoin in the world." Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

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