by Kevin Killough
American Express is laying off thousands of employees as the credit card company anticipates artificial intelligence taking on a larger role in its internal processes.
Amex CEO Stephen Squeri told analysts Friday on the company’s third-quarter earnings call that it would be eliminating 5% of its global workforce, CNBC reported.
The company had nearly 77,000 employees at the end of 2025.
Chief Financial Officer Christophe Le Caillec told CNBC that the goal of the restructuring was to make Amex “leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI.”
Automating processes requires them to be “optimally structured,” Le Caillec said.
The cuts at Amex are part of a broader trend in the financial services sector, and many firms are looking to replace repetitive roles with AI automation.
According to a July Gallup poll, nearly 80% of Americans said they expect AI to reduce the number of jobs over the next decade. This number increased 6 percentage points from 2025.
The poll also showed only 27% of Americans trust businesses to use AI responsibly. Beliefs dropped sharply among 18- to 29-year-olds, falling from 30% to 20% in one year.
“After two years of improving attitudes toward AI, the latest Bentley-Gallup survey shows Americans have cooled toward the technology in 2026. The shift is especially pronounced among young adults, who have become more skeptical across multiple measures in the study, including AI’s overall impact, businesses’ use of AI and its effect on jobs,” the Gallup poll noted.
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Kevin Killough is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
