Nestlé Announces 16,000 Layoffs as Food Giant Accelerates AI Strategy

‘The world is changing, and Nestlé needs to change faster,’ the new company CEO said.

Published: 10/16/2025, 3:58:35 PM EDT

Nestlé Announces 16,000 Layoffs as Food Giant Accelerates AI Strategy — Jars of Nescafe Gold coffee seen in the supermarket of Nestle headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, on Feb. 13, 2020. (Pierre Albouy/Reuters)

Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, is cutting 16,000 jobs worldwide over the next two years as part of cost-cutting efforts, the company announced on Oct. 16.

The job cuts will affect 6 percent of its global workforce. About 12,000 white-collar jobs and another 4,000 positions in manufacturing and the supply chain will be impacted.

New CEO Philipp Navratil said the layoffs are a part of the company’s efforts to target “operational efficiency” by “leveraging shared services and automating our processes, to drive positive business transformation.”

“The world is changing, and Nestlé needs to change faster,” Navratil said in a statement.

“This will include making hard but necessary decisions to reduce headcount.”

Nestlé, which controls a vast portfolio of approximately 2,000 brands such as KitKat and Nescafé, has already implemented artificial intelligence (AI) in its daily operations.

In its annual review, released in February, the company said it has incorporated automation in promotional activities and research and development.

Nestlé joins the growing number of corporations investing in automation practices.

Corporate America Bullish on AI

JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum told analysts in an Oct. 14 earnings call that the company may not hire as many people due to “productivity tailwinds from AI.”

“What we’re saying instead is let’s just do old-fashioned expense discipline and constrain people’s growth, constrain people’s headcount growth,” Barnum said.

“We’re going to do the same this year, have a very strong bias against having the reflective response to any given need to be to hire more people and feeling a little bit more confident on our ability to put that pressure on the organization because we know that even if we can’t always measure it that precisely, there are definitely productivity tailwinds from AI.”

In its earnings call this week, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon highlighted the financial institution’s inclusion of AI in various aspects of the company’s operations.

“To start, we are drilling in on a handful of front-to-back work streams that can significantly benefit from AI-driven process reengineering and will help inform our longer-term approach,” Solomon said.

According to a memo, first seen by Reuters, Solomon told employees that the company is reorganizing itself around artificial intelligence.

“To fully benefit from the promise of AI, we need greater speed and agility in all facets of our operations,” Solomon said.

“This doesn’t just mean retooling our platforms,” he added.

“It means taking a front-to-back view of how we organize our people, make decisions, and think about productivity and efficiency.”

The Goldman Sachs logo on at the New York Stock Exchange in New York on Sept. 13, 2022. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The good news for employees, the executive noted, is that layoffs could be limited.

Recent data from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas shows that technological updates, including automation and AI implementation, have resulted in more than 20,000 planned job cuts this year.

Workers Worried

While AI has not manufactured upheaval in employment conditions, the technology is appearing in various pockets of the labor market, and workers have expressed their consternation.

A June Gallup poll of approximately 20,000 workers revealed that 40 percent of employees have used AI in their roles at least a few times a year, up from 21 percent in 2023.

According to recent ADP Research survey data, 31 percent of workers strongly agreed with the statement, “I am scared that my job will be replaced by AI.”

A Pew Research Center study published this past spring showed that tech experts were more likely than the general public to expect AI will have a positive effect on the United States over the next 20 years. Twenty-three percent of adults are optimistic that AI will have a positive impact on how they perform their jobs, the study found.

But while AI has gradually proliferated workplaces across the United States, Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller says it is more prominent in large corporations than small businesses.

“While AI adoption is widespread among large firms, it is not nearly as common among smaller firms, which account for a large share of the U.S. economy, so the impact of AI on labor demand is uncertain,” Waller said in an Oct. 16 speech at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York.

Ultimately, he anticipates AI as a short-term risk in the labor market. However, according to Waller, “in the long run, AI should bring productivity gains that will be welfare improving.”

For young people entering the labor market, the impacts of automation are already being witnessed.

Research from venture capital firm SignalFire discovered a 50 percent decline in junior entry positions across multiple industries, including marketing, sales, engineering, and finance, between 2019 and 2024.

“The industry’s obsession with hiring bright-eyed grads right out of college is colliding with new realities: smaller funding rounds, shrinking teams, fewer new grad programs, and the rise of AI,” Asher Bantock, head of research at SignalFire, said in the report.

“Everyone took a hit in 2023, but while hiring bounced back in 2024 for mid- and senior-level roles, the cut keeps getting deeper for new grads.”

The youth unemployment rate—individuals aged 16 to 24—reached 10.5 percent in August and has been on an upward trajectory since early 2023.

From The Epoch Times