SUSE to Cut About 10% of Its Workforce, With CEO Citing AI and Automation
An internal memo seen by The Register says the need for some roles has "greatly diminished," and affected staff will be told by November 4.
Published
Last updated / Fact-checked on
SUSE, the privately held open-source software company, is cutting about 10 percent of its global workforce, according to an internal memo from CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen reported by The Register. In the memo, van Leeuwen says "automation and AI are fundamentally shifting how software companies operate."
Photo: Pexels / Pixabay
The memo went to SUSE's roughly 1,900 employees on Monday, November 2, according to The Register, which saw it. A 10 percent cut implies about 190 jobs. That figure is DailyMech's estimate; SUSE did not give a number.
The cuts at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Company | SUSE, owned by private equity firm EQT |
| Cut | About 10% of the global workforce |
| Workforce | About 1,900, per The Register |
| Implied jobs | About 190 (DailyMech estimate) |
| Notice to affected staff | By November 4 |
| Next steps | Employee representatives nominated the next day; one-to-one meetings start next week |
| Strategy briefing | Fiscal 2027 strategy shared with the rest of the company November 16 |
What the CEO said
"We are announcing a reduction of SUSE's global workforce of approximately 10 percent," van Leeuwen wrote. He called the decisions "painful for our people, our culture, and our open source community," but "necessary for us to adapt and build a sustainable, resilient SUSE for the long term."
He tied the cuts directly to AI. "AI capabilities are advancing exponentially, forcing us to radically reimagine our work," he wrote. "This means that the organizational design and cost base that SUSE is built on today will not carry us forward successfully."
Inside SUSE, he said, "modern tooling is already changing our daily workflows, enabling teams to move faster with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines." He added: "The requirement for some existing roles has greatly diminished. Other roles will evolve over the next few years."
SUSE is "accelerating investments in high priority areas, and deprioritizing others," the memo says. It does not name those areas.
What the memo leaves out
The memo does not list the roles or teams affected. SUSE says it weighed where people in those positions are "able to evolve, what they can stop doing, what they need to do more of," and made decisions on that basis.
It also does not say how much work SUSE has automated, or whether specific jobs are being replaced by AI tools. The link to AI is the CEO's explanation, not a measured result.
Van Leeuwen told staff the cuts are a "reflection of shifting organizational needs, not your talent or commitment." He added: "Any organization will be fortunate to have your expertise."
The background
The Register reported in September that SUSE had offered longer-serving staff "voluntary separation." The outlet suggests not enough people accepted, leading to compulsory cuts.
Van Leeuwen, a former Red Hat executive, joined SUSE in March 2023. EQT bought SUSE from Micro Focus in 2018 for $2.5 billion, listed it in Frankfurt in 2021 and took it private again in 2023. The Register also noted reports in March that EQT was considering selling the company again.
Why it matters
SUSE makes enterprise Linux and infrastructure software used in critical systems. Its memo states plainly what many software firms only hint at: AI tools are changing team structure and reducing the need for some roles, not just speeding up coding.
For customers and the open-source community, the main question is which product and engineering teams are affected. SUSE has not said.
What to watch
- November 4. When affected employees are told, and whether details on teams leak out.
- November 16. The fiscal 2027 strategy briefing, which may show which areas SUSE is prioritizing.
- Europe. How consultation with employee representatives, including in the Czech Republic where The Register notes a union is active, shapes the outcome.
- Ownership. Any movement on a possible EQT sale.
More coverage is on our Artificial Intelligence hub.
How we reported this
DailyMech relied on The Register's exclusive report, which quotes SUSE's internal memo at length; we did not see the memo ourselves. The implied number of affected jobs is our own calculation from the workforce and percentage The Register reported. SUSE has not publicly named the roles involved.
Published and fact-checked November 2, 2026.
Sources
- The Register, Liam Proven, "SUSE to cut one in ten employees because of... AI," Nov. 2, 2026: https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/11/02/suse-to-cut-one-in-ten-employees-because-of-ai/5306950
DailyMech used AI tools to help research and draft this article; it was fact-checked by our editors.