American Express is cutting 5% of its workforce to 'prepare for AI'

Stephen Squeri, chairman and chief executive officer of American Express Co., speaks during an Economic Club of New York event in New York, US, on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022.Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAmerican Express CEO Stephen Squeri said Friday the card company is eliminating 5% of its global workforce.The firm, which reported third-quarter results earlier Friday, is taking a $336 million restructuring charge in the quarter, Squeri told analysts. Those types of charges typically include employee severance costs.Amex had almost 77,000 employees at the end of 2025. "We've got good momentum, but to accelerate innovation and win over the next few years, we needed to become [a] more agile and efficient organization," Squeri said. "We believe this exercise will help us operate and execute more effectively and give us greater capacity to invest in our business priorities," he said.The restructuring charge was to make American Express "leaner, more agile, and also to prepare for AI," CFO Christophe Le Caillec told CNBC in an interview."You don't want to automate processes that are not optimally structured, and so what we're doing here is to reduce layers and increase spans of controls, so that we can automate and take advantage of AI in the coming quarters and the coming years," Le Caillec said. This story is developing. Please check back for updates.