IBM is the latest tech giant to join the slew of lay offs affecting major industry players in the last six months.

The company announced that 4,000 employees would lose their jobs this week.

According to the Bloomberg report, however, the lay offs are not for the same reasons other companies have cited in their redundancies.

While other companies are downsizing after rapidly hiring during the pandemic, IBM is releasing workers who previously held positions in the Kyndryl and Watson Health units, which have since been spun off the company.

Chief Financial Officer James Kavanaugh estimated the layoffs will cost the company around $300 million.

Despite the cost, IBM has shared a healthy outlook for the coming year as the company continues to shift aware from infrastructure and toward cloud computing.

IBM will continue to look to hire in high growth areas.

While the layoffs do not represent a major shift in the company’s goals, their hiring practices may reflect their move to cloud services.

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Kavanagh, in an interview with Reuters said IBM was “committed to hiring for client-facing research and development.”

The New York based company indicated net cash flow for 2022 was US$9.3bln, lower than the US$10bln forecasted.

“We grew revenue above our mid-single digit model,” said chief executive officer, Arvind Krishna, in the trading update, adding: “Looking ahead to 2023, we expect full-year revenue growth consistent with our mid-single digit mode.”

Other companies, like Google and Microsoft, made their priorities clear as they announced thousands of redundancies.

The companies cited an emphasis on AI in their restructuring, with Microsoft swiftly announcing the continuation of their partnership with Open AI.

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