{
  "id": 14632633,
  "title": "Vembu refuses to lay off people amid AI squeeze",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/vembu-refuses-to-lay-off-people-amid-ai-squeeze",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-15T05:22:21.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Economic Times",
    "slug": "the-economic-times",
    "url": "https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ai/ai-insights/zohos-vembu-refuses-to-lay-off-people-even-as-ai-squeezes-saas-companies/articleshow/134958025.cms"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Vembu, the founder and chief scientist of software as a service (SaaS) firm Vembu, has refused to lay off employees despite growing challenges from artificial intelligence (AI) and geopolitical uncertainties. Responding to Airtable's layoffs, Vembu tweeted, \"This is normal in SaaS. This is what we have refused to do.\" While Airtable claimed their decision was not a reflection of employee performance but a response to their belief in smaller teams delivering better results, Vembu stated that at Zoho, the approach is to retrain people for new products or better customer support as AI productivity enables smaller teams.\n\nVembu set 2030 as the year to decide on potential layoffs, if necessary. He attributed the company's decision to choose a different approach than VC-funded and public companies, citing the pressure on costs related to data center and AI expenses. Vembu believes the company will revisit its strategy in 2030. In a September interview with ET AI, when questioned about AI agents potentially killing SaaS, Vembu affirmed that Zoho is expanding globally, citing a 45-50% growth in India.\n\nEarlier in the week, Vembu announced that Zoho employees would not receive their annual pay increase this year due to increasing AI costs. Additionally, the company has not added to its employee headcount in the past 18 months. Vembu acknowledged the grim outlook for software jobs in general and admitted that the company has cut its marketing budget in an effort to avoid mass layoffs, warning that the software job market is uncertain and AI has significantly escalated costs.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}