Kitchener-Waterloo-based information management company OpenText has laid off four percent of its global workforce, BetaKit has learned.
“[More than 17] years working on the same product and they fired me in 8 [minutes].”
Starting on Monday afternoon, OpenText employees began posting on social media that they were looking for work. Some of those posting on LinkedIn and other online message boards, as well as employees BetaKit spoke with, indicated they lost their jobs as part of corporate restructuring.
The cuts appear to be widespread, with employees from the United States, Canada, and India, who worked as engineers, community managers, senior analysts, leads, and others, all now searching for work.
Following the publication of this story, OpenText told BetaKit that the cuts affected four percent of its staff. OpenText’s website says it employs 22,000 people. A four- percent cut would impact roughly 880 employees.
“We regularly evaluate our organization to ensure we are aligned with our strategic priorities and positioned to support our customers and long-term growth,” an OpenText spokesperson told BetaKit. “Decisions that impact employees are never taken lightly. We are committed to treating those affected with respect and providing support during the transition.”
One longtime employee affected by the layoffs told BetaKit that all support engineers for a specific product were terminated, and that the team was now “scrambling to get someone up to speed on the product itself.”
“My direct manager didn’t even know who was being affected until after it was done,” the employee told BetaKit. “[More than 17] years working on the same product and they fired me in 8 [minutes].”
Founded in 1991, OpenText provides a suite of cloud-based information management solutions to businesses, competing with the likes of IBM, Abbyy, and Hyland. The company has adapted over the years to introduce cloud and AI services, including cybersecurity and AI agents, and brings in annual recurring revenue of more than $1 billion USD.
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The layoffs come just one month before former IBM Americas president Ayman Antoun is set to become OpenText’s new CEO. Antoun will claim the position from interim CEO James McGourlay on April 20, ending the company’s fluid leadership situation after ousting longtime leader Mark Barrenechea last August.
Following Barrenechea’s departure, OpenText began exploring the sale of its “non-core assets” to focus on its core business: information management for AI. So far, it’s sold both its eDOCS business for $163 million USD ($227.3 million CAD) and its Vertica business for $150 million USD ($205 million CAD). The proceeds of both sales are earmarked to pay off debt.
OpenText is in the midst of executing a three-year “business optimization plan” to bring the company’s costs in check, which Barrenechea kicked off in 2024 by cutting 1,200 employees. OpenText cut another 1,600 jobs in May 2025 as Barrenechea told employees that embracing AI was a “number one priority and baseline expectation.”
OpenText’s stock has had a rough start to 2026; shares of $OTEX are down 33 percent year-to-date on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock received a small bump after its strong Q2 earnings report last month, but fell nearly four percent to hit a 52-week low of $30.03 per share on Tuesday morning.
With files from Madison McLauchlan.
UPDATE (03/26/2026): This story has been updated to note the percentage of OpenText employees impacted by the layoffs, and with a statement from an OpenText spokesperson.
Feature image courtesy Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic (CC BY 1.0).