The workforce moves should be completed by the end of fiscal 2024, Salesforce said Wednesday in a regulatory filing, and cost the company US$1.4 billion to US$2.1 billion. As much as US$1 billion of that will come in its fiscal fourth quarter. Salesforce had about 80,000 employees.
Salesforce, the largest private-sector employer in its hometown of San Francisco, has almost tripled its workforce in the past four years, in large part through dozens of acquisitions, including buying Slack in 2021 for US$27.7 billion. From January 2020 to the end of October, headcount grew by more than 30,000.
Job cuts have roiled the sector in recent months with Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Twitter Inc., HP Inc. and Seagate Technology Holdings Plc. also announcing thousands of reductions. Also on Wednesday, shares of software giant Microsoft Corp. declined after UBS Group AG downgraded the stock, saying it anticipated a steep “deceleration” in the company’s cloud-computing business — a key driver of growth.