Salesforce joins Kaltura and announced that they are laying off dozens of employees

Salesforce joins Kaltura and both announced that they are laying off dozens of employees. The cloud software giant will lay off about 10% of its workforce worldwide and close several offices, as part of a restructuring plan. Calcalist learned that the layoffs also reached the company's local branch in Israel, which began summoning employees for a hearing. The number of those laid off in Israel is still unclear, but it is estimated that there will be dozens of workers.

Salesforce employs approximately 50,000 people worldwide, of which 700 are in Israel. Salesforce estimates that the cost of the restructuring process will be between $1.4-2.1 billion, with between $800 million and $1 billion reported in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2023. In a letter issued by Mark Benioff, CEO of the company and its founder, wrote to the company's employees: "The environment remains challenging and our customers are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions. We have made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 10% over the next few weeks. I thought a lot about how we got to this moment. We hired too many people that led to this economic crisis we are facing now, and I take responsibility for that. Within the next hour, employees who were initially affected by this decision will receive an email notifying them. Our leadership will contact these employees directly and provide their teams with clarity regarding changes within their organizations." In the letter, Benioff states that those fired whether they are from the United States or abroad will receive a compensation package that includes at least five months of compensation and additional benefits.
The company's stock lost close to half of its value last year, amid the general declines in the technology sector due to interest rate hikes and fears of a recession in the US. Salesforce Israel was established in 2011, with the purchase of the Israeli startup Navajo Systems, and became an important research and development center responsible for developing solutions Leaders of the international company in various fields, including marketing intelligence based on artificial intelligence and big data, artificial intelligence for language and conversation analysis, information security and field service solutions. Since the establishment of the company in Israel, Salesforce Global has made strategic purchases in the Israeli market: Blue Tail in 2012, Krensen in 2015 , Implicit in 2016, Datorma in 2018, and Bonovo and KlixSoftware in 2019. The company employs more than 700 people in Israel in three development centers in Tel Aviv, Petah Tikva and Nazareth.
There is also trouble in Kaltura, the corporate video company, which is unable to get out of the cycle of cuts. The company is now laying off 11% of its workforce, of which 39 work in Israel. These layoffs come only half a year after another 10% layoffs. In the summer, Kaltura laid off 80 employees, of which 30 were from the development center in Israel. After the two rounds, the number of Kaltura employees in Israel will decrease to less than 400, out of a total of approximately 700 employees worldwide.