Apple has shed over 400 jobs in carefully selected waves from August through its new CEO John Ternus, with media consolidations counting more than 400 in Vision Pro, Siri and AI software, hardware engineering managers, and some sales positions. No official confirmation from Apple has occurred yet regarding any one number of over 400 company-wide layoffs, but California WARN filings have documented 147 job losses permanently.
John Ternus became CEO on September 1, 2026, replacing Tim Cook, who became an executive chairman at the company. According to reports from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and other sources like 9to5Mac and Reuters among others, the layoffs are being carried out as part of efforts by Ternus to cut layers of management, reduce time for product cycles, and focus on AI and efficiency engineering.
In August 2026, while Ternus was CEO-in-waiting, Apple cut roughly 200 roles: about 100 from the Vision Products Group (including gaming and immersive video teams amid soft Vision Pro adoption) and about 100 from Siri and related AI/software teams tied to a rebuilt architecture. Apple told Bloomberg the changes would “impact a limited number of existing roles” while creating new ones and supporting affected employees.
The California WARN notices also included 147 permanent separations taking effect around October 19-20, 2026—79 at Apple Park in Cupertino and 68 among two Sunnyvale locations. This information overlaps with August layoffs and provides the most concrete publicly reported total.
Apple dismissed a few engineering program managers working in the hardware group around late September along with almost six directors. This is the role that has been managing the timelines and cross-functionality for decades together. The affected employees have been given a few weeks to find other internal opportunities; those who miss out will be laid off by the end of this year. Besides, there have been some reports of layoffs in the sales department of Apple during the company’s restructuring process.
The secondary coverage has summed up the three phases along with the WARN notices, resulting in numbers exceeding 400. However, more careful counts include the 147 within ~200 figure and point out the unknown exact number of EPM job cuts. Apple’s entire staff is ~166,000; even high estimates do not approach 1 percent.
Additionally, there was a plan from Apple for replacing around 5,000 AppleCare customer support associates with artificial intelligence agents in the summertime. However, this plan has been put on hold indefinitely and will not go through. At present, initial troubleshooting requests in the United States and Canada are done by generative AI, which escalates to humans if needed. None of the layoffs have happened yet.
The reasons include better management for connecting engineers with executives, resource shifting for AI projects, and a reassessment of Vision Pro investments due to limited commercial success. Smart glasses efforts continue as planned in some sources. All of these reasons come from reporting sources and not from an overall company statement.
Unknown here is Apple’s official total, attribution of all the cuts that took place to Ternus’s period (many August cuts took place before the official starting date of Ternus’s employment), and if there will be any additional reductions. The difference between actual filing and naming rounds and the aggregate number on social media is crucial because the cuts are real, but not the “over 400 fired” figure.
