Starting today, Autodesk has cut approximately 1,000 employees, about 7% of its workforce, as a result of its continued transition to a go-to-market (GTM) sales model at the company. That journey began last year and resulted in substantial layoffs as well.

Autodesk, a giant in the M&E, PD&M, and AEC industries, has announced that its major organizational shift that favors a go-to-market (GTM) model over customer-facing sales teams has resulted in a reduction of approximately 7% of its global workforce. This amounts to around 1,000 workers, most of whom come from customer-facing sales teams.

Autodesk employees were informed of the cuts in a message from CEO Andrew Anagnost on Thursday, January 22, and those directly impacted by the reduction were already being notified. He added that Autodesk will provide exiting employees with severance, benefits continuation, and career transition assistance, where applicable.

Anagnost stated the enterprise-wide organizational changes come as Autodesk enters the next phase of its multi-year GTM transformation and reflects a decision by leadership to align the organization with its long-term strategy. He called the situation difficult but necessary to the company’s readiness to lead the next era of Design and Make.

“Last year, we shared that we were beginning a two-year journey to modernize our GTM organization. The majority of today’s action is focused on completing the final phase of that journey. Additionally, we are making smaller, targeted adjustments to further align our organization with the opportunities ahead,” Anagnost stated in his message.

According to Anagnost, the reduction was driven by three key strategic shifts, which he listed in priority order.

Completing the company’s GTM transformation. 

“Over the past several years, we’ve modernized our go-to-market model, simplifying how customers engage with us, and intentionally built a foundation aligned with where the industry is heading. With this action, the sales optimization phase is now essentially complete, and we have a stronger, more efficient foundation to support our next chapter of growth.”

Expanding the company’s AI, platform and industry cloud leadership. 

“We’ve built a strong foundation across our industry cloud, platform, and AI, positioning Autodesk to deliver more connected, intelligent, and valuable solutions. As we move into the next phase of executing our strategy, we’re reinvesting in and scaling these capabilities to unlock greater customer value and support long-term growth.”

Strengthening the company’s corporate functions.

“As the business environment evolves, corporate functions are essential to Autodesk’s continued strength. We’re realigning our investments to ensure these teams remain resilient, modern, and scalable as they support transformation across the business.”

Last year, Autodesk made organizational changes that resulted in layoffs affecting about 9% of its workforce, or about 1,350 people. Despite that and the current cuts, Anagnost stated such reductions would not be an annual occurrence. He also noted that the changes are not driven by the external environment or an effort to replace people with AI, saying, “humans will always be the most important part of the equation.”

Headquartered in San Francisco, Autodesk was founded in 1982. Among its more popular products are AutoCAD, Fusion, 3ds Max, Maya, Revit, and Inventor. It started moving to a subscription-only model for its products in the mid-2010s and away from perpetual licenses, creating more predictability, recurring revenue, accelerate product upgrades, and broaden customer access. In September 2022, in an effort to better support and advance customer digital transformation journeys through connected workflows, Autodesk  introduced industry clouds that connect processes in M&E (Flow), AEC (Forma), and D&M (Fusion).

For the fiscal-2026 third quarter, ended October 31, 2025, the company reported revenue growth of 18%, to $1.85 billion, attributed especially to strong performance in AECO.

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