Monday.com and Exodus Cut Hundreds in AI-First Restructurings as Wall Street Trims Despite Record Quarter

Executive Summary

The AI-first restructuring pattern broadened beyond enterprise SaaS this week, reaching consumer fintech and Wall Street even as UK official data produced the first credible signs of a summer hiring rebound. Monday.com cut hundreds of roles on 22 July to restructure around AI-native workflows, Exodus Movement disclosed a 25% global workforce reduction via SEC 8-K filing on 20 July, and Bloomberg reported that Wall Street's top banks continued cutting headcount through a record Q2. Against that backdrop, the UK's REC/KPMG Report on Jobs and REC Labour Market Tracker both flagged the first improvement in permanent placements in months, though vacancies remain below pre-Gulf-crisis levels.

Hiring Demand Signals

The UK REC Labour Market Tracker, published 22 July, reported the first improvement in job advertisement volumes since February, driven by summer seasonal hiring. Total active vacancies remained above pre-Gulf-crisis March levels but below the 2025 baseline.

The KPMG/REC UK Report on Jobs for July showed permanent placements falling at the slowest pace in eleven months, while temp billings edged higher for the second consecutive month — pointing to stabilisation rather than renewed decline.

ONS Vacancies and Jobs data confirmed UK vacancies at 812,000 for the May–July quarter, the ninth consecutive quarterly fall but at a shallower rate of decline than in prior periods. Independent layoff tracking stood at approximately 25 companies and 13,500 job cuts in the US month-to-date as of mid-July, with a single large technology firm accounting for more than 4,600 of those cuts.

The clearest positive hiring signal this week sits firmly in the UK. London and Manchester recruiters should anticipate faster candidate turnover as the summer improvement takes hold, while the US mid-market continues to contract.

Salary and Compensation Trends

The ONS Average Weekly Earnings bulletin, released 15 July, reported UK regular pay growth at 5.0% for the three months to May — public sector at 5.5%, private sector at 4.8% — with real wage growth holding at 1.7%.

The KPMG/REC July report noted that starting salaries for permanent hires rose at the softest pace in the current inflation cycle, while temp pay accelerated slightly on shortage-role premiums. Cooling salary growth gives employers making permanent offers this quarter a meaningful window of advantage.

Bloomberg's Wall Street analysis showed the top six US banks posting record aggregate Q2 revenue while still cutting approximately 4,000 roles in the quarter. Compensation ratios fell to multi-year lows as banks reallocated spend toward AI and technology infrastructure. For recruiters, this means base and bonus pressure in US banking is running downward even in record-revenue divisions, expanding the sourceable talent pool at competitive rates.

Recruitment Technology and Platforms

Reuters Breakingviews argued on 22 July that consulting firms are being forced to accelerate their own AI adoption, with McKinsey, BCG and Bain rolling out internal AI-agent tooling that materially compresses associate and analyst hiring pipelines. The commentary framed this as an industry inflection point rather than a temporary adjustment.

The Job Boards Connect July newsletter highlighted a wave of consolidation among job boards adopting AI matching and agentic screening, with major generalist platforms and specialist boards alike repositioning their core value propositions around intelligent candidate filtering.

Monday.com's cuts were explicitly framed by CEO Roy Mann as a restructure around AI-native workflows. Agentic features are moving to the product core rather than sitting as optional add-ons — a pattern increasingly common across enterprise SaaS and one that signals fewer generalist headcount needs even as product complexity grows.

Recruiters running consulting or SaaS pipelines should expect fewer junior briefs and more senior roles requiring demonstrated AI-workflow fluency through Q3. Sourcing approaches that can verify genuine AI adoption — beyond self-reported claims — are becoming a meaningful competitive differentiator.

Talent Mobility and Geographic Shifts

Bloomberg's Wall Street analysis noted continued cross-border headcount rebalancing toward Warsaw, Dublin, Bengaluru and Singapore, with New York and London both contracting. This reflects a structural, multi-quarter trend rather than a one-off quarterly adjustment.

Monday.com's reductions are expected to affect roles primarily in Tel Aviv and New York, according to Proactive Investors' reporting. No new material US or UK visa-policy changes were confirmed this week beyond previously tracked FY27 H-1B lottery outcomes and the UK Skilled Worker salary threshold uplift effective 22 July.

Nearshore and EMEA hubs remain the principal beneficiaries of Wall Street's ongoing headcount rebalancing. Recruiters with Employer of Record partnerships in Warsaw, Dublin and Bengaluru are positioned for an unusually active quarter.

Sector-Specific Hiring Intelligence

Five sectors produced the most actionable signals this week.

Wall Street Banking

Record Q2 revenue did not slow cuts. Approximately 4,000 additional roles were eliminated across JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo during Q2. Active hiring continues for private-credit originators, AI/ML platform engineers and regulatory technology specialists.

Enterprise SaaS

Monday.com's reduction of hundreds of roles, combined with a continuing severance window from Sprout Social's earlier ~260-person cut, creates a fresh and sizeable pool of martech, workflow and SaaS engineering talent.

Consumer Crypto and Fintech

Exodus Movement cut 25% of its global workforce on 20 July as part of a strategic pivot toward payments. Roles affected span engineering, product and customer support, predominantly US-remote positions.

Management Consulting

Reuters flagged AI-driven compression of junior consulting hiring pipelines. Boutique and specialist AI-adjacent practices — including firms such as Bain's Alpha division and McKinsey's QuantumBlack — continue to recruit senior AI leads even as analyst and associate pipelines thin.

Semiconductors

Intel's Q2 earnings, due this week, were widely expected to include a restructuring update. This sector remains on watchlist for the following week's brief.

Earnings-Driven Layoffs and Fresh Talent Pools

Three confirmed workforce actions this week create immediate sourcing opportunities, each with an estimated four-to-twelve-week optimal contact window as severance periods begin.

Monday.com

Hundreds of roles cut on 22 July, framed as an AI-first restructuring rather than a pure cost reduction. Affected functions span R&D, customer success and sales operations. The talent pool is most relevant to adjacent SaaS platforms — including Asana, ClickUp, Notion, Airtable, Smartsheet, Atlassian, Coda and Wrike — seeking workflow, product management, go-to-market and SaaS engineering expertise. Severance and equity acceleration terms had not been publicly disclosed at the time of writing.

Exodus Movement

A 25% global workforce reduction disclosed via SEC 8-K on 20 July. Affected roles are concentrated in engineering, product and customer support, mostly held by US-remote employees. Consumer-crypto UX designers and wallet-security engineers from this cohort are highly relevant to platforms such as Coinbase, Kraken, ConsenSys (MetaMask), Ledger, Trezor, Phantom, Rainbow and Fireblocks.

Wall Street Banks

Approximately 4,000 roles cut across the top six US banks in Q2, despite record revenues. Roles concentrated in equity research, junior investment banking, cash equities operations and back-office functions. Mid-level talent from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi is moving toward private-credit shops (Apollo, Ares, Blackstone Credit, KKR Credit), boutique advisory firms (Evercore, Moelis, Lazard, Centerview) and regulatory technology providers.

Watchlist for Next Week

Intel, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and Amazon are all scheduled to report Q2 earnings between 29 July and 1 August. These five companies represent the highest-probability sources of the next wave of earnings-driven workforce actions and should be monitored closely.