SUSE to cut about 10% of its workforce, citing AI and automation
The German Linux vendor told staff the reduction follows a review of its strategy, required capabilities and team structures, The Register reported, citing an internal memo it said it had seen. SUSE has not publicly confirmed the cuts, and has not said which roles or countries are affected.
The Register reported on November 2 that chief executive Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen told SUSE’s workforce in an email that the company was announcing “a reduction of SUSE’s global workforce of approximately 10 percent.” The Register, which described its report as exclusive, said it had seen the email. The memo gave no absolute number, and did not say which roles or countries would be affected. No statement from SUSE about the reduction was found on its website as of November 5.
In the memo, van Leeuwen said automation and AI were “fundamentally shifting how software companies operate,” The Register reported, and that AI capabilities were advancing so fast that SUSE had to radically rethink how it worked. Modern tooling, he wrote, was already changing daily workflows, letting teams move faster with less operational overhead and flatter reporting lines, so the requirement for some existing roles had greatly diminished while others would evolve. The company would accelerate investment in high-priority areas and deprioritise others.
Affected staff were to be informed by November 4, employee representatives nominated the following day, and one-to-one meetings to begin at the start of the following week, The Register reported. The rest of the workforce is due to see SUSE’s fiscal year 2027 strategy on November 16. No further details had been publicly reported as of November 5.
The memo gave only a percentage. About 190 jobs is an arithmetic estimate, not a company figure: it applies 10% to the “more than 1,900 employees” stated on owner EQT’s portfolio page for SUSE — a page that carries no date and still cites fiscal 2020 results. Other published counts differ: Wikipedia put SUSE’s headcount at 2,500 in 2024. This article therefore reports the percentage only, except where an estimate is explicitly labelled as such.
The reduction follows a voluntary-separation offer in September. The Register reported on September 22 that SUSE had offered voluntary separation and early retirement to eligible, longer-serving employees; a SUSE representative confirmed the programme and said participation was completely voluntary, with no predefined targets. The Register’s November report suggested the voluntary offer had not drawn enough takers — that is The Register’s reading, not a statement by the company. Separately, employees at SUSE’s Prague operation formed a union earlier in 2026, part of the Czech ICT Union, The Register reported; it said there was no evidence connecting the union drive to the separation programme.
SUSE, founded in Germany in 1992, sells enterprise Linux (SUSE Linux Enterprise), container management (Rancher) and edge software. Its corporate headquarters is in Luxembourg City and its operational headquarters in Nuremberg, Germany, with major offices including Provo, Utah, in the United States. Swedish private equity firm EQT bought SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in 2018, floated it on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2021 and took it private again in 2023, The Register reported. The Register also noted that Reuters reported in March 2026 that EQT was considering selling SUSE again; that report described the process as early-stage, and no link between any sale exploration and the job cuts has been established.
SUSE has not disclosed how many of the cuts, if any, will fall in the United States. A check of this site’s WARN data found no filings under the SUSE name.
What is still unknown: which roles and countries are affected, how many employees were notified by November 4, what support affected employees will receive, and whether the reduction will produce any WARN filing in the United States.