Bird Cuts 20% of European Jobs amid AI and a Pivot to the U.S

Dutch tech company Bird is laying off 20 percent of its European staff. According to CEO Robert Vis, artificial intelligence is a direct driver of the shake-up. The company says AI can now handle work that only a few years ago required dedicated teams.

The cuts were announced internally and later disclosed via a LinkedIn post by Vis. He wrote that Bird aims to position its workforce closer to customers in the United States. With a growing share of clients operating outside European time zones, the company is shifting operational focus toward the U.S. market.

Bird, which operated for years as MessageBird, is one of the Netherlands’ most prominent tech firms of the past decade. It provides communications and automation software for businesses and grew into a unicorn valued in the billions.

Bird explicitly cites internal AI adoption as a reason for the job cuts. Vis argues AI systems are fundamentally changing how companies operate. Tasks once performed manually by specialists can now be partly automated through generative AI and workflow orchestration.

That makes Bird one of the first major Dutch tech companies to openly acknowledge AI is directly causing job losses in-house. It mirrors a broader trend across global tech. GitLab and several U.S. software firms have previously said they’re using AI to run leaner, more efficient teams.

Roles in customer support, operations, administrative work, and select software tasks are under most pressure. AI tools can now handle customer queries, generate code, automate workflows, and run internal analyses—often at lower cost than traditional teams.

Bird’s restructuring underscores that AI’s impact has moved beyond pilots and productivity boosts. European knowledge workers are increasingly confronting reorganizations where automation plays a central role.

Strategy also factors in. Bird wants a stronger footprint in the U.S., home to many of its customers and investors—continuing a trend of European tech firms tilting their commercial center of gravity toward America.

The move isn’t out of the blue. Vis previously warned that the Netherlands is becoming less attractive for high-growth tech companies. In 2025, he even said Bird might largely leave the country due to the business climate. He later softened that stance in an interview with Follow the Money, saying his comments were meant to spark debate.

Even so, the latest restructuring suggests Bird’s long-term focus is drifting further from Europe.

That shift could affect the Netherlands’ standing as a tech hub. European startups compete not just on innovation but also on regulation, taxes, access to capital, and labor flexibility. U.S. tech companies typically have larger war chests and a more aggressive AI growth playbook.

Some see the move as a logical result of technological progress and global competition. Others argue profit optimization is increasingly being packaged as AI transformation.

The debate points to a larger global question: will AI mainly drive productivity—or ultimately lead to structural job losses across the knowledge economy?

For now, one thing is clear: major tech companies are no longer using AI only as a tool, but also as a rationale for sweeping reorganizations.

Voorlopig lijkt vooral duidelijk dat grote technologiebedrijven AI niet langer alleen gebruiken als hulpmiddel, maar ook als argument voor structurele reorganisaties.