YouTube Offers Voluntary Employee Buyout Amid AI Pivot

YouTube is undergoing a staff shakeup as the company focuses on artificial intelligence, offering its U.S.-based employees voluntary redundancy packages with severance packages.

The online video platform, launched in 2005, is restructuring its product team for the first time since 2015, according to an internal memo from YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, as Google parent CEO Sundar Pichai urged staff to embrace AI to increase productivity.

“Looking forward, the next frontier for YouTube is AI,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement published by CNBC, noting that no roles are being eliminated with the restructuring.

With the restructuring, Mohan will directly oversee three product groups, with Christian Oestlien leading the subscription products division, which includes YouTube Music and Premium, YouTube TV, Primetime Channels, Podcasts and Commerce; and Johanna Voolich, Director of Product, leads the Viewer Products team, which covers YouTube’s core app, Living Room, Search and Discovery, YouTube Kids, Learning, Trust and Safety.

This week, Amazon announced it was laying off 14,000 employees and other jobs are expected to be cut as the company also moves toward AI.

In a note shared publicly, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of human experience and technology at Amazon, said “the world is changing rapidly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling businesses to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and brand new ones). We believe we need to be organized in a simpler way, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and our business.”