Food giant Nestlé says that it's planning to slash roughly 16,000 jobs globally over the next two years, accounting for nearly 6% of the company's total workforce. 

According to an October 16 release from the company, 12,000 of the job cuts will impact white-collar roles, while the remaining 4,000 will come from Nestlé's manufacturing and supply chain operations. The move comes as part of a larger initiative from Nestlé to automate more of its processes using artificial intelligence, although the company did not specify the exact roles the technology would be replacing. 

"The world is changing, and Nestlé needs to change faster," said Nestlé CEO Philipp Navratil, adding that the company will look to "substantially" reduce costs by targeting more than $3.7 billion in savings by the end of 2027. Former CEO Laurent Freixe had previously set a target to save $3.14 billion over that same period. Freixe was fired in September after it was revealed that he had been involved in an undisclosed romantic relationship with an employee.

An October report from executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that technological updates that included automation and AI have led to more than 20,000 job cuts in the U.S. in 2025, while another 17,000 were explicitly attributed to AI.