American Express announced Friday that it will eliminate about 5% of its global workforce — roughly 3,500 jobs — as part of a restructuring aimed at getting the company leaner for artificial intelligence, even as it reported record quarterly revenue and raised its profit forecast for the year.
The cuts, disclosed alongside third-quarter results, will come with a $336 million restructuring charge. AmEx employs about 78,000 people worldwide.
The American Express Tower at 200 Vesey Street, Brookfield Place, lower Manhattan. Photo: King of Hearts / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts the company needs to become a more "agile and efficient" organization. The restructuring is designed to "reduce layers and increase spans of control, so that we can automate and take advantage of AI in the coming quarters and the coming years." Chief Financial Officer Christophe Le Caillec told CNBC the goal is to make AmEx "leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI."
The announcement stood out for its timing: the same earnings release that set up the layoffs showed business booming. Revenue hit a record $20.1 billion, up 9% from a year earlier, and net income jumped 28% to $3.7 billion. AmEx raised its full-year adjusted profit forecast to $17.60–$17.90 per share, with the midpoint above Wall Street's expectations.
Shares still fell about 3.7% on Friday, and the stock is down roughly 12% this year — investors have been watching expense growth after the company ramped up marketing spending and refreshed cards with new perks. Third-quarter expenses reached $14.5 billion, up 9%.
AmEx's affluent customer base kept spending through it all. Travel and entertainment spending rose 10% in the third quarter, led by a 13% jump in airline purchases and 9% growth at restaurants. The company also said spending by Gen Z customers surged 35%.
The company framed the cuts as organizational efficiency rather than a response to deteriorating business — a pattern now repeating across corporate America, where profitable companies are cutting staff anyway. AmEx is the second major financial firm to announce deep cuts this week: Barclays said Thursday it would eliminate about 5,000 jobs, also citing AI and cost reduction. The Wall Street Journal noted eBay is cutting about 9% of its staff (roughly 1,000 workers) and Volvo Cars another 2,500. More than 40 companies have announced layoffs in 2026 citing AI, according to Business Insider, with Block, Coinbase and Standard Chartered among them.
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AmEx has not said which countries, teams or offices will bear the reductions, or on what timeline employees will be told.
The company is also racing to set the rules for the AI era it says it is preparing for. Squeri said AmEx has launched conversational AI voice agents and is using AI to help employees resolve service issues and disputes — while laying down firm rules for outside AI agents trying to act on customers' behalf.
"We need to protect our customer and merchants, and we're only going to allow agents access to our systems that are either approved through API or MCP channels," he said on the earnings call — a shot at AI assistants that try to scrape or automate their way through financial accounts.
The layoffs underscore a growing tension in the American economy: companies are posting record results while shrinking their workforces, betting that AI will let them do more with less. For AmEx's 78,000 employees, the question is which side of that bet they land on.