Some of the world’s richest tech companies are spending huge sums to lay off employees.
Business Insider reviewed the latest annual reports from some of the biggest US tech companies to see how much they spent on severance and workforce reductions.
We started by looking at the so-called Magnificent Seven tech companies — Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla, and Alphabet.
Of those seven, Meta, Nvidia, Apple, and Alphabet did not disclose severance costs. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Tesla only included severance together with other charges, so we excluded them because we couldn’t accurately compare them with the other companies.
The only Mag 7 company to disclose these costs, Amazon, spent $2.7 billion in estimated severance costs through 2025.
$1.8 billion of that was recorded in the third quarter of last year.
Amazon has been cutting jobs across much of the company since CEO Andy Jassy began reshaping the business following its pandemic-era hiring spree. In October 2025, it announced it was laying off 14,000 staff, followed by another 16,000 in early 2026.
If those were all included in the “planned role eliminations” worth $1.8 billion, it suggests each employee cost Amazon $60,000 to lay off.
Outside the Mag 7, we looked at five other US tech giants — Oracle, Intel, Dell, AMD, and Micron — all of which disclosed severance costs.
Of those, Oracle and Intel spent the most on departing employees, at $1.8 billion each.
Intel’s layoffs formed part of an attempted turnaround under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who has been cutting costs. In 2025, it cut about 15% of its workforce, or over 25,000 jobs.
That suggests Intel spent over $70,000 per employee it laid off. Intel did not respond to a request for comment.
Oracle has reorganized parts of its business as it pours investment into cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence. For example, it’s a key partner in OpenAI’s Stargate data-center project, which plans to spend $500 billion.
Oracle’s head count fell by 21,000 between May 2025 and May 2026, per its latest annual report. Restructuring and other expenses, which comprised employee severance, contract termination, and other exit activity, increased by 391% from $374 million to about $1.8 billion over the last year.
“As our cloud and AI businesses grow, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud and AI products to our customers around the world,” an Oracle spokesperson told Business Insider.
Dell reported $569 million in severance costs. The company has spent the past several years slimming down after the pandemic PC boom faded, while AI servers and infrastructure have become more profitable.
Its most recent 10-K filing showed that employee numbers have fallen by 36,000 over the last three years, a 27% decline in head count.
Cisco disclosed $617 million in employee severance charges as part of a restructuring plan. The networking giant said the cuts would help redirect investment toward AI.
At the other end of the scale, chipmakers reported much smaller costs. AMD spent $79 million on severance, while Micron reported $30 million in employee severance costs.
Dell, Cisco, AMD, and Micron did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
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