Concerns about how artificial intelligence will affect workers continue to rise as advances and new products promise automation and efficiency.
Evidence suggests that fear is justified.
An MIT study in November found that 11.7% of jobs could already be automated using artificial intelligence. Studies have shown that employers are already eliminating entry-level jobs because of the technology. Companies are also already pointing to AI as the cause of layoffs.
As companies make more meaningful use of AI, some may want to take a closer look at how many employees they really need.
In a recent TechCrunch survey, several corporate VCs said that AI will have a big impact on the corporate workforce by 2026. This was particularly interesting because the survey didn’t specifically ask about it.
Eric Bahn, co-founder and general partner at Hustle Fund, expects to see workforce impacts by 2026. He’s just not sure exactly what that will look like.
“I want to see which roles that have been known for more repetition become automated, or even more complicated roles with more logic become more automated,” Bahn said. “Is it going to lead to more layoffs? Is there going to be higher productivity? Or will AI just be an augmentation for the existing labor market to be even more productive in the future? All of this seems pretty unanswered, but it looks like something big will happen in 2026.”
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Marell Evans, founder and managing partner at Exceptional Capital, predicted that companies looking to increase AI spending will pull money from their labor and hiring pool.
“I think on the back of seeing an incremental increase in AI budgets, we will see more human labor being cut and layoffs will continue to aggressively impact the U.S. employment rate,” Evans said.
Rajeev Dham, managing director at Sapphire, agreed that 2026 budgets will begin to shift resources from labor to artificial intelligence. Jason Mendel, a venture investor at Battery Ventures, added that AI will begin to move beyond just being a tool to make existing employees more efficient by 2026.
“2026 will be the year of the agent as software expands from making people more productive to automating work itself and delivering on the value of human labor displacement in some areas,” Mendel said.
Antonia Dean, a partner at Black Operator Ventures, said that even if companies don’t shift labor budgets toward AI projects, they are still likely to say that AI is the cause of layoffs or a reduction in labor costs anyway.
“The complexity here is that many companies, despite how ready or not they are to successfully use AI solutions, will say they are increasing their investment in AI to explain why they are cutting spending in other areas or trimming the workforce,” Dean said. “In reality, artificial intelligence will become the scapegoat for managers who want to cover up for past mistakes.”
Many AI companies argue that their technology does not eliminate jobs, but rather helps shift workers to “deep work” or to higher-skilled jobs, while AI simply automates repetitive “busy work.”
But not everyone buys that argument, and people are worried about their jobs being automated. According to VCs who invest in this space, it doesn’t sound like those fears will subside in 2026.