Is it A.I.? Does it replace technical staff or provide an excuse for layoffs?

Meta, Coinbase and Block have each laid off at least 10% of their employees in recent months and have partly blamed artificial intelligence. Around 13,000 jobs were lost across the three companies.

But the cuts also came after big changes and growing questions about their businesses. Meta backed away from its big bet on the so-called Metaverse, which cost the company around $80 billion. Coinbase Chief Executive Brian Armstrong said its business remained volatile and there was “a bear market” for the cryptocurrency. And Block's top executive, Jack Dorsey, acknowledged that the company overexpanded during the pandemic, tripling its workforce from 2019 to 2022.

Layoffs in the tech industry are accelerating, regardless of executives' motivations. Since the start of the year, more than 150 tech companies have cut a total of at least 115,000 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the sector.

These drip-feed layoffs have become a constant stream in recent weeks. Companies that have downsized run the gamut, from software vendors like Atlassian and Autodesk, to social media apps like Pinterest and LinkedIn, to fintech companies like Intuit and PayPal.

But in many cases, recent layoffs have coincided with other business issues. Wall Street loves AI. story right now. Analysts and economists say that poses a smokescreen for companies looking to boost profits or right old mistakes.

Eliminate jobs to make way for AI. It's "a nice excuse, but some of them are not necessarily the best and best managed," said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at investment bank Evercore. "They may have overhired, or they may have lost market share. There may be other problems."