He said the company will work hard to avoid mass layoffs but "the outlook for software jobs in general is grim" (Photo: Reuters)
Homegrown technology firm Zoho Corporation has paused its annual pay hikes and pruned its marketing expenditure, citing sharply escalating Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure costs and an uncertain outlook for the software sector, founder Sridhar Vembu said on Tuesday.
In a post on social media platform X, Vembu described the global employment landscape for the software sector as "grim" and said that the company has kept its headcount flat for the past 18 months while making efforts to avoid mass layoffs.
"The business outlook for software is uncertain, and AI has raised costs dramatically with a) A massive 4-fold increase in server prices which we need for data centres and b) AI usage increasing rapidly, leading to much higher expenses, which we are trying to control," Vembu said.
He added that a "challenging geopolitical backdrop" has further compounded these operational pressures.