GM lays off 600 IT workers, prioritizes AI-native development roles

General Motors has laid off more than 600 salaried IT workers—over 10% of its information technology workforce—in what the company frames as a transformation to position itself for future growth. The restructuring, confirmed to TechCrunch by GM and first reported by Bloomberg News, is not simply a headcount reduction; the automaker is simultaneously recruiting for IT roles with different skill sets.

The positions GM is actively hiring for focus on AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. In essence, the company seeks workers who can architect and build systems designed around AI from inception—designing systems, training models, and engineering data pipelines—rather than applying AI as a productivity overlay on existing infrastructure.

This restructuring represents the continuation of a multi-year workforce evolution at GM. In August 2024, the company laid off approximately 1,000 software workers. Leadership changes underscore the shift in priorities: in May 2025, Sterling Anderson, co-founder of autonomous trucking startup Aurora, was appointed chief product officer; three senior software executives departed in November 2024 as Anderson consolidated disparate technology units. The company subsequently hired Behrad Toghi as AI lead in October and appointed Rashed Haq as vice president of autonomous vehicles, drawing him from Cruise, the self-driving company GM acquired and later shuttered.

For the broader enterprise sector, GM's approach signals how AI adoption materializes in practice at scale. Rather than layering AI capabilities onto existing organizational structures, large enterprises are rebuilding core engineering functions around AI-native architectures. The specific skill gaps GM is targeting—agent development, model engineering, autonomous vehicle systems—point to where enterprise infrastructure demand is consolidating.