Linux specialist SUSE will cut a significant number of jobs. The CEO told employees that automation and AI made the “painful decision” necessary.
One in 10 jobs at Linux pioneer SUSE is at risk. In an internal email to employees, the leadership of the open-source software company announced sweeping job cuts, citing “automation and AI.” The British tech publication The Register first reported the news Monday.
In an email to its 1,900 employees, obtained by The Register [1], SUSE CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen announced “the reduction of about 10 percent of SUSE’s global workforce.” “These decisions are painful for our employees, our company culture and our open-source community,” he wrote. “However, they are necessary so we can adapt and build a sustainable, resilient SUSE for the long term.”
The job cuts were decided after an in-depth review of “our future strategy, the skills we need and our team structures,” Van Leeuwen continued. It was clear, he said, “that automation and AI are fundamentally changing how software companies work. (…) This means that the organizational setup and cost structure on which SUSE is based today will not take us successfully into the future.” The need for some existing roles at the company had “declined significantly.” That meant “we are accelerating investment in priority areas while prioritizing other areas less heavily.”
Details of the cuts remain unclear
The executive did not specify which jobs would be affected by the cuts. The company said it had assessed how role holders “could develop further, which tasks they should stop doing and which they should take on more of — and made its decisions on that basis.”
Affected employees would be notified by Wednesday; employee representatives would be named Thursday, and individual meetings would begin early next week, The Register reported. On Nov. 16, the remaining employees are set to get a look at the strategy for fiscal 2027.
According to The Register, SUSE had asked longtime employees in September whether they would accept “voluntary termination of employment.” But apparently not enough people volunteered, the tech publication reported, so the company is now making involuntary job cuts.
Sale rumors earlier this year
SUSE stands for “Software and System Development.” Founded by three students in Fürth in 1992, the company is known for SUSE Linux, a version of the Linux operating system, and offers open-source software to business customers.
The software company was carved out of U.S. corporation Micro Focus in 2018 by Swedish private equity firm EQT AB. In 2023, EQT significantly increased its majority stake in SUSE and took the Luxembourg-based company private. SUSE was valued at just under $3 billion at the time. In March this year, reports said EQT was considering a sale of SUSE Linux [2]. A sale price of up to $6 billion was under discussion. Experts saw SUSE as a potential beneficiary of the AI boom, as demand for reliable foundational software for businesses was expected to rise with the development and deployment of more AI applications.
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