A company in Bergen has announced downsizing and stated that it plans to use more artificial intelligence going forward, according to Bergensavisen. The case is one of the first concrete examples from Western Norway where AI strategies are now having direct consequences for Norwegian jobs.
Global wave washes over Norway
What is happening in Bergen is far from an isolated case. According to figures from the career transition firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI was cited as the reason in eight percent of all announced layoff plans during March 2026. So far in 2026, over 61,000 employees globally have been affected by AI-driven downsizings — after over 100,000 were impacted throughout 2025.
Patterns from large international companies are clear: automation is replacing administrative functions, customer support, and technical support roles faster than many anticipated.
Who is cutting, and why?
Among the most discussed examples from 2026 is the financial company Block, where CEO Jack Dorsey restructured around AI-driven financial tools and eliminated around 4,000 positions — equivalent to 40 percent of its global workforce. CFO Amrita Ahuja stated, according to available source material, that the company expects to operate faster with smaller, highly skilled teams where AI automates more of the work.
Logistics software company WiseTech Global cut 2,000 positions, 30 percent of its staff, after management concluded that AI enables higher productivity with fewer employees. Salesforce, for its part, replaced around 4,000 customer service positions after implementing AI agents that now handle approximately half of all customer interactions.
IBM, HP, Snap, and the law firm Baker McKenzie are also among the companies that have directly linked downsizings to AI implementation over the past year, according to the collected source material.
Which jobs disappear first?
A consistent pattern in the documented examples is that support functions are hit hardest initially: customer support, marketing, HR, data analysis, and secretarial functions. At IBM, CEO Arvind Krishna confirmed in January 2026 that hundreds of HR employees had already been replaced by AI — something he warned of as early as 2023, when he estimated that around 7,800 back-office positions would disappear within five years.
Uncertainty regarding scope and causality
It is important to emphasize that it is not always unequivocal that AI alone is the cause of downsizings. Many companies implement cuts for complex reasons — weak quarterly figures, market changes, or restructuring — and AI is sometimes used as an explanatory model that also serves communicative purposes towards investors. Expert communities still disagree on the long-term extent of AI-driven job displacement.
The Bergen case, as reported by Bergensavisen, currently provides limited information on which job categories are affected and to what extent AI is the direct triggering factor rather than one of several. 24AI continues to follow the case.
Bergen as a mirror for Norwegian working life
For Norwegian employees and union representatives, this development is a warning that the global AI wave does not stop at the national border. Norwegian working life is largely organized around collective bargaining and co-determination rights, which theoretically gives employees better conditions to influence restructuring processes than in many other countries. Nevertheless, the example from Bergen shows that the pressure is real — also locally.