July 10, 2026

1,800 Jobs, and Allianz's CEO Said AI Was the Reason

Allianz Partners' CEO dropped the euphemisms and named AI for up to 1,800 call-centre cuts, Xbox's unionized studios announced a four-city "Save Our Devs" march, and the Elder Scrolls Online studio is down to 40% of its former size.

July 2026 so far (through July 10), newly announced cuts with disclosed numbers: roughly 7,000 people across 8 companies. Microsoft (4,800, July 6), Allianz Partners (up to 1,800, July 8, insurance not tech), Mews (~200, July 7), Starling Bank (~130, July 8), Bragg Gaming (~95, July 9), Darrow (60, July 7), Yield Guild Games (35, July 6), and GameSpot (~10, July 9, games media). Plus Trust & Will (undisclosed, July 9). Separately, Cisco WARN filings for 471 California roles become effective July 13, part of the ~4,000 cuts announced in May.

For running context, tech employers announced 139,156 U.S. job cuts through the first half of 2026, up 83% year over year, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Allianz Partners: the clearest AI-replacement layoff yet

Allianz Partners, the travel-insurance arm of Europe's largest insurer, will cut between 1,500 and 1,800 jobs across Europe as it turns to AI. CEO Tomas Kunzmann confirmed the figure at an event in Munich on the evening of July 7, and Reuters reported it July 8.

What makes this cut different is the candor. Kunzmann said plainly that artificial intelligence is the reason, not a contributing factor wrapped in restructuring language. "This could happen to any of us at some point," he told the Munich audience, per Insurance Business. The cuts will take the form of severance agreements, early retirements, and voluntary departures, following six months of negotiation with works councils in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries.

The division employs more than 22,000 people. Roughly 14,000 of them handle customer enquiries and claims by phone, which is precisely the call-centre work that conversational AI can now triage, translate, and resolve without a person on the line. The cuts represent about 7 to 8% of the division's headcount.

The contrast with Microsoft is stark. Four days before cutting 4,800 jobs on July 6, Microsoft's chief people officer Amy Coleman wrote in a memo that "the roles eliminated today are not being replaced by AI." Allianz's CEO said the opposite, out loud, on a stage. The 1,500-to-1,800 figure first surfaced as an unconfirmed plan in November 2025, but what changed this week is certainty: the CEO put his name to it and named the cause.

Adding to the irony, Allianz was ranked number one in the 2026 Evident AI Index for Insurance weeks before confirming the cuts, with more than 900 registered AI use cases across the business. Allianz board member Barbara Karuth-Zele described the ranking as reflecting "a colleague freed up for what truly matters." For the people losing their jobs, "freed up" lands differently.

Xbox's unionized studios are marching, and the optics are getting worse

The Bethesda Game Studios union, organized under the OneBGS banner with the Communications Workers of America, announced a "Save Our Devs" march on July 15 across four cities: Rockville, Austin, Dallas, and Montreal. The rally will take place outside ZeniMax studio offices at 12:30 p.m. Eastern, per Game Developer and Kotaku.

The union says 440 union positions were eliminated across Bethesda Game Studios, ZeniMax Online Studios, id Software, the ZeniMax Workers Union (QA), and ZeniMax corporate. Microsoft is framing the Bethesda cuts as "an entrepreneurial change in the scope of business," claiming a transition from a "studio-based business model to a franchise-based model." OneBGS rejects that framing as "corporate wordplay" designed to dodge the legal obligation to bargain. The union is demanding preferential transfers into open Xbox roles, stronger severance, extended healthcare, and recall rights that would give laid-off members first dibs when studios expand again.

"The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear," the OneBGS organizing committee wrote. "We won't let that happen."

The memo fight has already spilled into public view. Earlier this week, employees set up memorials in office common areas for laid-off colleagues, only to be told by HR to take them down, per Aftermath. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told staff that "work passes through as many as 14 layers of management" and that platform teams are "40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined." The Bethesda union's response, via GamesRadar: "We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

Then there is the Federal Reserve. On July 9, the Fed announced a task force on "Productivity and Jobs" to "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence." One of the appointees is Asha Sharma, the same Xbox CEO who announced 3,200 layoffs days earlier. She will serve alongside Marc Andreessen and a Stanford economist on leave at Anthropic. The Verge and Kotaku both noted the timing.

id Software co-founder John Carmack broke his silence on July 10, writing on X that he was "saddened, but can't muster anger or outrage over it." He acknowledged that his earlier statement that "Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand" was "not aging well," per PCGamesN. His diagnosis was blunt: "I suspect that Id Software was a marginal business from Microsoft's perspective. I believe the reports that Minecraft revenues have been carrying several other studios. To continue being produced long term, games need to succeed, not just be beloved." He added: "The game isn't over yet, and I hope the studio rallies through."

Elder Scrolls Online studio down to 40% of its size in 18 months

New analysis of Maryland WARN filings puts the Elder Scrolls Online devastation in sharper perspective. ZeniMax Online Studios has lost 275 employees between July 2025 and July 2026, according to PC Gamer. A WARN notice from July 2025 put the prior round at 62 people at the same office. This week's round added 213 more, plus 166 at ZeniMax Media (which includes Bethesda Game Studios), for a Maryland total of 379, per Game Developer.

The ZeniMax Online Union had 461 members at the end of 2024. Assuming no other significant attrition, PC Gamer estimates the studio now consists of about 186 people, roughly 40% of the manpower it had 18 months ago. The ESO team posted on Reddit that it "reaffirms commitment to The Elder Scrolls Online" but warned that "the roadmaps we previously shared will be shifting."

Trust & Will cut staff and is already hiring for "AI fluency"

Estate-planning fintech Trust & Will has undergone layoffs as part of a restructuring, a company spokesperson told InvestmentNews in an email dated July 2. The company declined to share the number of cuts. Tracxn lists Trust & Will at about 160 employees as of April 30.

The stated reason was unusually direct for a company of this size. "This wasn't performance-related; it reflects how quickly the estate planning and broader wealth tech category is evolving, particularly with AI reshaping where value sits in the space," the spokesperson said.

The kicker is in the company's own job board. Trust & Will has two open roles listed, including a performance marketing manager whose description reads: "You'll also be expected to bring AI fluency to the work. We're a lean team, and the marketers who succeed here will use Claude, agentic workflows, automations, and prompt-based tooling to move faster, analyze deeper, and get more leverage out of every hour. This isn't a bonus, it's how we operate." The company is cutting staff and simultaneously posting roles that demand the AI skills that presumably made some of the departed roles redundant.

Among those laid off was Maya Powers, a product marketing manager who had been at Trust & Will for five years, per her LinkedIn post.

Briefs

GameSpot and IGN. Fandom cut GameSpot's entire commerce team on July 9, affecting four staff and five freelancers who produced deals posts and buying guides, plus VP of Games and Entertainment Chris Grant, per Aftermath. It is the fifth round of layoffs at GameSpot since Fandom acquired the site in 2022. Deals editor Brendan Hesse wrote on Bluesky that he was laid off while on paid medical leave recovering from a gunshot wound. The contraction extends across games media: IGN recently cut about 12% of its editorial union under a Ziff Davis cost mandate, despite what the IGN Creators Guild called "several quarters in a row of year-over-year revenue increases."

Cisco. WARN letters filed in California confirm 471 Cisco employees will be terminated effective July 13: 81 in San Francisco, 154 in Milpitas, and 236 in San Jose, with software engineering roles hit hardest, per CRN. These cuts are part of the roughly 4,000-employee restructuring Cisco announced in May, not a new announcement.

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