Saturday's Financial Times carried a headline built for maximum unease: US tech giants have slashed 140,000 jobs this year, even as they pour unprecedented sums into artificial intelligence. US tech companies have eliminated close to 140,000 jobs since January, accounting for more than a third of every layoff announced nationwide, per an FT review of corporate filings and Challenger data. Look closer and the picture is more layered than the headline allows. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are meanwhile budgeting $725B for data centers this year, with Oracle putting up another $70B, spending that dwarfs the savings from the cuts themselves. Interestingly, the market is not entirely convinced by the framing either. Companies citing AI as a factor in job cuts have underperformed the Nasdaq by almost 10% in the 30 trading days following their announcements, suggesting the market doesn't entirely buy the stories that the companies are telling.