Over the past year, the conversation around AI layoffs and EBITDA keeps showing up in the same way with the CEOs and founders I work with as a fractional CFO. “We’re investing in AI so we can cut headcount and protect EBITDA.”
Same story, different company. The buzzword is AI, the mechanism is layoffs, and the promise is higher profitability. As someone who has led turnarounds and exits across multiple industries, I need to say this plainly.
Using AI primarily to cut people and protect EBITDA is an incorrect strategy.
Protecting EBITDA and adopting AI are not bad goals. The problem is when they become the only goals. When “AI to reduce employees” and “EBITDA at all costs” drive every major decision, you don’t build a stronger company. You quietly lock in stagnation.
The Illusion of AI-Driven Efficiency
If you read enough earnings calls and layoff memos, you’ll notice AI is increasingly cited as the reason jobs are being cut, even in profitable, growing companies. It looks neat on paper.
Replace hundreds of roles with AI. Report faster processes and lower costs. Show a short-term margin lift and declare EBITDA protected.
But several analyses have pointed out that AI-driven layoffs rarely deliver the long-term returns leaders expect. The organizations seeing real payoff from AI are doing harder work: redesigning processes, retraining people, and building new revenue streams instead of simply shrinking the workforce.
Efficiency alone is not a strategy. It’s a tactic. And when a tactic masquerades as strategy, leaders start optimizing the wrong things.
Ikea: A Different Playbook for AI
The recent Ikea story is a powerful example of a different approach. When Ingka Group, Ikea’s largest retailer, trained a chatbot that could handle 47 percent of customer calls, 8,500 frontline employees could have been laid off. Many companies would have stopped there and called it an AI success.
Instead, Ikea asked a more strategic question. What are customers asking for that the chatbot can’t provide?
They discovered a great unmet demand for interior design help, real guidance on creating better living spaces, not just product recommendations. Ikea retrained those 8,500 employees as remote interior design advisors and launched a premium design service. The result: a new revenue channel that generated about €1.3 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow toward 10 percent of total revenue by 2028.
Same technology. Very different leadership choice.
AI wasn’t a headcount reduction tool. It was a catalyst to redeploy human talent into higher-value work.
Klarna: When AI Cuts Too Deep
There’s also a cautionary example. Klarna rolled out an AI customer service agent that could handle millions of conversations a month, cutting average resolution time from 11 minutes to under 2 and projecting tens of millions of dollars in added profit by replacing the work of hundreds of people.
Then the unintended consequences hit.
The AI handled simple inquiries well but struggled with complex, sensitive billing situations. Customers who felt unheard or mistreated took their frustration to social media and review platforms, damaging trust and brand perception. Klarna eventually began rehiring humans and publicly acknowledged a simple truth: AI gives speed, talent gives empathy.
That’s the part most EBITDA-only strategies miss. Trust, loyalty, and brand equity don’t show up neatly in a quarterly P&L, but they drive long-term enterprise value.
The CFO’s Growth Agenda: AI Plus People
As a CFO, I’m not anti-AI, and I’m not anti-hard decisions. I am against using AI as a substitute for strategy.
A better question for leadership teams is this: how can we use AI to expand what our people can build, not just shrink what our people cost?
That means:
Mapping where AI genuinely creates leverage, in speed, accuracy, and scale, across repeatable workflows.
Quantifying the human capacity you free up, not just the roles you can eliminate.
Designing new services, experiences, and revenue lines that only humans can deliver.
Investing in reskilling and redeployment instead of defaulting to severance.
Aligning KPIs so you measure both efficiency and innovation, not just cost savings.
In financial language, the goal is to use AI to grow the numerator, the value created, rather than just reduce the denominator, the cost base.
AI Isn’t the Threat. Leadership Choices Are.
AI is transforming how work gets done. The real risk is not the technology. It’s leadership choices that prioritize short-term efficiency over long-term resilience and growth.
The companies that will win in this next decade won’t be the ones that cut the most jobs the fastest. They will be the ones willing to do harder, slower, more disciplined work, using AI to multiply human contribution, open new markets, and build businesses that are both profitable and deeply human.
Those are the companies I choose to work with.
Rethinking your own AI and workforce strategy?
If your leadership team is weighing AI investment against headcount decisions, that’s exactly the kind of tradeoff a fractional CFO can help you model before you commit.
