It’s been a rough first half of the year for the tech sector, after things kicked off with a series of layoffs in January. But where does that leave some of the top cloud providers? Silverlinings dug through piles of financial filings to extract the latest employee data possible.
Here’s our workforce rundown for some of the biggest companies operating in the cloud arena today.
10. VMware
According to its latest annual report, VMware had 38,300 employees as of February 3, 2023, with around 15,000 of these based in the U.S. However, workers at the company have reportedly expressed concerns that this figure could soon change due to the VMware’s pending acquisition deal with Broadcom. The latter is notorious for scooping up and gutting companies.
Broadcom has sought to quell fears by promising to invest $2 billion per year in R&D and accelerated solutions deployment for VMware following the deal’s close. But the market still appears skeptical of VMware’s post-deal future, with Gartner advising clients to prepare off-ramps.
9. HPE
HPE has been pushing hard on the cloud front with its GreenLake platform. As of October 31, 2022, the company had 60,200 employees, though it did not provide a breakout for each of its divisions.
8. Salesforce
Salesforce said in its fiscal 2023 annual report it had 79,390 employees as of January 31, 2023. That figure included the 10% of its workforce – or roughly 7,900 employees – that the company announced plans to cut at the start of January, according to company filings.
7. Tencent
In its 2022 annual report, Tencent noted it had 108,436 employees as of December 31, 2022. That figure was down year on year from 112,771 thanks to a layoff that was announced in August 2022. Breakout employee figures for the company’s different divisions were not available in compamy filings.
6. Oracle
Oracle’s workforce grew over the past year, jumping from 143,000 in May 2022 to 164,000 as of the end of May 2023. The employee roster in its cloud services and license support operations division specifically also rose, climbing from 21,000 in the May 2022 period to 27,000 in May 2023. That said, Oracle has not been immune from the layoff cycle. The company reportedly cut 3,000 employees from newly acquired company Cerner and has noted restructuring charges in its financial filings.
5. Alphabet/Google Cloud
Perhaps farther down this list than one might expect, Google Cloud parent company Alphabet ended calendar Q1 with 190,711 employees. However, CFO Ruth Porat noted during an earnings call that the figure included “almost all” of the 12,000 employees the company said in January it planned to lay off.
Alphabet recorded $2 billion in severance charges in Q1, and Porat noted it expects employees impacted by the job cuts would “no longer be reflected in our headcount” by the end of Q2. The layoffs will leave the company with roughly 178,711 employees once fully implemented. It was not immediately clear how many of Alphabet’s employees work for its Google Cloud division.
Alphabet recorded $2 billion in severance charges in Q1, and Porat noted it expects employees impacted by the job cuts would “no longer be reflected in our headcount” by the end of Q2. The layoffs will leave the company with roughly 178,711 employees once fully implemented.It was not immediately clear how many of Alphabet’s employees work for its Google Cloud division.
4. Microsoft
Microsoft has a different fiscal calendar than most — ending its 2022 earnings year on June 20, 2022 with 221,000 full-time employees. Of these, 85,000 were in operations, including manufacturing, distribution, product support and consulting services; 73,000 were in product research and development; 47,000 were in sales and marketing; and 16,000 were in general and administration.
But in January 2023, the company announced plans to cut 10,000 workers from its ranks, which would bring it down to a total of 211,000. Those cuts were expected to be implemented by the end of Microsoft’s fiscal Q3, which ended March 31.
CFO Amy Hood said during an earnings call in April that “at a total company level, headcount at the end of March was 9% higher than a year ago.” She did not provide a breakout figure though.
3. Alibaba Group
Alibaba may not be a household name in the U.S., but the Chinese retail and cloud giant boasts a substantial workforce. As of March 31, 2023, Alibaba Group had 235,216 employees. That figure was down year on year from 254,941 as of March 31, 2022. The company does not provide a breakout number for cloud staff.
In May, Alibaba announced plans to spin off its cloud unit into a new standalone company. Shortly after the news broke, Bloomberg reported Alibaba’s cloud unit was undertaking a round of layoffs that had the potential to impact as much as 7% of the unit’s staff ahead of the spin off.
2. IBM
IBM and its wholly owned subsidiaries (including Red Hat) ended 2022 with a total of 288,300 full-time employees. However, the company in January 2023 announced plans to slash 3,900 jobs. CEO Arvind Krishna subsequently told Bloomberg in April the cuts could end up impacting closer to 5,000 employees. As a result, IBM recorded $260 million in severance charges in Q1 2023.
Matt Hicks, CEO of IBM-owned Red Hat, in April unveiled plans to cut just under 4% of his staff by the end of Q2. According to its website, Red Hat has approximately 19,000 employees, but it’s not clear what date that figure is tied to — that is, whether it includes the announced cuts or not. It’s also not clear whether the Red Hat cuts were included in the figures announced by IBM in January. An IBM spokesperson told Silverlinings that employee count is 285,000+ employees.
1. Amazon
Amazon is by far the largest cloud company in financial terms, raking in $127.4 billion in revenue in Q1 and $3.2 billion in profit. Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division alone accounted for nearly $21.4 billion in sales in the recent quarter. But like other providers, it recently slashed its ranks in a bid to cut costs.
As of the end of Q1 2023, the company had a total of 1.465 million full and part-time employees, excluding contractors and other temporary personnel. That figure was down 10% year on year from 1.622 million and 4% sequentially from 1.541 million. It was not immediately clear how many of those employees were working for AWS as opposed to Amazon’s retail operations. The company declined to provide a breakout figure for AWS employees.
Check out our other Top 10 lists here.