Autodesk lays off 1,350 staff
Autodesk is to lay off 9% of its workforce, or around 1,350 jobs. The news comes as the company reported increased net revenue across all of its business sectors for the last financial quarter.
In a memo to employees, CEO Andrew Anagnost attributed the job cuts to a decision to “accelerate investment in AI” and its cloud business, and to “strengthen business resilience”.
Autodesk’s largest set of job cuts in years follow strong financial results
The job cuts are Autodesk’s largest set of layoffs in some years, and follow a period of growth for the company.
Its most recent set of financial results, reported at the same time as the job cuts, are strong.
In its 8-K filing for the financial quarter that ended on 31 January 2025, Autodesk reported a total revenue of $1.64 billion, up 12% on the same quarter last year.
Net revenue was up on the previous year for all of Autodesk’s four main product families: AECO, AutoCAD, Manufacturing, and Media and Entertainment.
The latter is by some way the smallest of Autodesk’s major business sectors, but includes the products that CG Channel readers will be most familiar with, including Maya and 3ds Max.
Which parts of Autodesk’s business will be affected by the cuts?
Autodesk has not announced exactly where the job cuts will be made, but its press release on the financial results suggest that they will mainly affect sales and marketing, not R&D.
In it, CFO Janesh Moorjani comments that Autodesk has just completed its “new transaction model” and has now “initiated the optimization phase of our sales and marketing plan”.
So why is Autodesk laying off staff now?
In a memo to employees, CEO Andrew Anagnost also cited the company’s changing Go-to-Market model – its sales and marketing strategy – as a reason for the cuts.
“Our GTM model has evolved … from the transition to subscription and multi-year contracts billed annually to self-service enablement [and] the adoption of direct billing,” he wrote.
Anagnost also cited a decision to accelerate Autodesk’s investment in both new AI technologies and its new ‘industry clouds’, like Flow, its cloud-based platform for Media and Entertainment.
“Our investments in cloud, platform, and AI are ahead of our peers,” he wrote. “To maintain and extend this leadership, we are shifting resources across our GTM, Platform, Industry, and Corporate functions to accelerate investments in these strategic priorities.”
The memo also notes a need to strengthen business resilience in the face of changes in “macroeconomic and geopolitical factors, as well as evolving regulations”.
Pressure from activist investors
The announcements come as Autodesk faces pressure from activist investor Starboard Value to deliver increased returns to shareholders.
The situation is summarized well in this AEC Magazine article from last September, which notes that the changes Starboard Value wants would create “mass layoffs and cost reductions at Autodesk, in order to drive up operating margin”.
In the memo to staff, Andrew Anagnost rather pointedly states that “this decision was made by myself and CEO staff and is not the result of any third-party pressure”.
However, Autodesk’s press release to investors also notes that the company expects “consistent growth … reinforced by persistent share repurchases, to deliver sustainable shareholder value over many years”.
Read Andrew Anagnost’s memo to Autodesk employees on the Autodesk website
Read Autodesk’s press release on its Q4 Fiscal 2025 financial results
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