WiseTech Global will cut roughly 2000 staff – nearly a third of its workforce of 7000 – over the next two years as chief executive Zubin Appoo bets the logistics software giant’s future on artificial intelligence.
Some teams face headcount reductions of up to 50 per cent, starting with product development and customer service, including recently acquired US platform e2open.
The restructure comes amid a steep sell-off across traditional software companies, from Atlassian to Adobe, driven by fears that AI-powered coding tools will allow upstarts to rapidly replicate services that took incumbents years to build.
“The era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” Appoo declared on Wednesday, calling AI “the most significant shift in decades” for software development.
The cuts follow a turbulent period for the company, which has faced governance scrutiny and leadership upheaval including the departure of former chief executive Richard White. Appoo framed the job losses as an “AI transformation program” that would let WiseTech move “faster from ideas to real customer value”.
More to come
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
