Pinterest to Cut ‘Less Than 15%’ of Staff Amid AI Push

Pinterest said it plans to cut “less than 15%” of its workforce and reduce office space as it shifts resources toward investing in artificial intelligence.

The search and discovery platform anticipates related pretax charges of $35 million to $45 million, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pinterest expects to complete the restructuring plan near the end of its third quarter ending Sept. 30, 2026. It had 5,205 employees as of Sept. 30, according to an earlier regulatory filing, which would suggest that the latest round of cuts affected less than 780 workers.

The San Francisco-based company intends to reallocate resources toward “AI-focused roles and teams that drive AI adoption and execution” and plans to prioritize AI-powered products, according to the filing.

Shares of Pinterest fell as much as 10% in New York on Tuesday.

Pinterest is the latest tech company to re-orient its business to try and capitalize on the rise of AI products. Instagram parent Meta Platforms earlier this month also initiated job cuts in its Reality Labs division, moving resources from virtual reality products to AI wearables. Artificial intelligence has become a major focus of tech platforms, which are spending heavily to build data centers and other AI infrastructure to support new AI tools and services.

Pinterest’s move “likely suggests more aggressive investments in building its AI capabilities, which will be a drag on gross margin,” wrote Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and Robert Biggar in a note on Tuesday.

But the company’s AI spending could help improve ad pricing, where it currently lags larger rivals such as Meta in direct-response ads, they added.

Wedbush analyst Scott Devitt said the announced job cuts are “consistent with our thesis that Pinterest will face rising threats from consumer adoption of competing AI-enabled platforms and agentic commerce tools.”

“While it may be too early to evaluate if these moves will offer any comfort to investors, our bias for future estimate revisions lean to the downside,” he added.

Pinterest is set to report fourth-quarter earnings results on Feb. 12.