WiseTech Global Ltd. plans to cut about 2,000 jobs—almost 30% of its workforce—under an AI-driven revamp, crystallising efficiencies from artificial intelligence that are upending the global software industry.
In a candid and full-blooded embrace of AI, Chief Executive Officer Zubin Appoo on Wednesday laid out what he said were unprecedented benefits for the freight software provider.
The cuts to WiseTech’s 7,000-strong workforce are the largest and deepest in Australia attributable to AI, where companies such as Commonwealth Bank of Australia are also displacing humans with AI.
“This marks one of the most important inflection points in our 30-plus year history,” Appoo said on a conference call. AI means greater productivity, in less time, from fewer people, he said. The company’s cost base will be stripped bare and the economics of software development reshaped. In some parts of the workforce such as customer service, one in two workers will disappear.
“I am prepared to say this clearly: the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over,” Appoo said. AI is “unlocking levels of efficiency gains across WiseTech that were previously out of reach.”
The mass job cuts come just days after a little-known firm called Citrini Research reignited the “AI scare trade” by mapping out a hypothetical future scenario that included large-scale AI-led corporate disruption, mass unemployment, software-backed loan defaults and economic contraction.
Beyond Australia, companies the world over are increasingly citing AI as a driver that allows them to eliminate staff and reduce hiring. Software developers could be among those most impacted, with advanced AI capable of handling tasks such as coding that have been traditionally performed by people.
In the UK, companies reported that AI led to 8% net job losses over the past year, a Morgan Stanley study showed last month. It was the highest level in a group that included German, American, Japanese and Australian firms.
During WiseTech’s conference call, Appoo said AI would allow WiseTech to offer more value, and to embed its products deeper into customers’ operations. The job cuts will be made this fiscal year and next.
His presentation, also released Wednesday, depicted a future in which people with specialist skills and knowledge are still key, but with swarms of AI agents overseen by humans.
WiseTech creates software that helps companies from shippers to logistics firms plan and manage the flow of goods around the world, from tracking containers to dealing with customs.
Appoo did concede that AI threatens other software businesses that charge by the number of users, but that the risk didn’t apply to WiseTech. The company’s software is at the centre of global trade and logistics and can’t itself be replaced, he said. “It’s not an overlay,” he said.
Under what WiseTech calls a “deep AI transformation,” workers in product and development, and customer service, will be the first to go, including US-based E2open, which WiseTech bought last year in its biggest-ever acquisition.
Other roles will be targeted next year, the company said.
Appoo was named CEO in July last year partly to address investors’ governance concerns. White is now WiseTech’s chairman.
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