IT company fired developers the day after AI agents were released

Pleo, a company that develops corporate expense management software, has introduced AI agents that autonomously process invoices, monitor treasury operations, and maintain accounting records, handing over to a human only those cases that require their direct participation.

Following the release, it became known about the cuts that affected Pleo's Offering divisions, which cover product development, technology, design and data analysis, and which previously employed about 300 people. About 50 employees in Denmark, the UK and Germany were laid off, including some management-level specialists.

Pleo declined to link the two events. However, their explanation for the cuts suggests just that, TNWreports . The changes were “designed to increase focus, simplify decision-making, and accelerate product delivery to customers,” a spokesperson said, “while also reflecting the growing role of new technologies in the work of the product and technology teams.”

The AI ​​agents Pleo sells are aimed at its clients’ finance staff, not its own engineers, so this release isn’t a direct replacement for the people being laid off. The internal “new technologies” most likely refer to the AI ​​coding tools that have now become the standard for developers.

However, the symbolism of this situation is hard to miss: a company that promotes automation as a liberation from routine is, in the same week, laying off the teams that create this automation.

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