Snap CEO Evan Spiegel parties with wife, Miranda Kerr; returns to lay off 1,000 employees: Social media reacts, ‘Sick’

Evan Spiegel was spotted enjoying the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California with his supermodel wife, Miranda Kerr. The billionaire co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc returned and announced layoffs involving around 1,000 employees. Spiegel, 34, blamed artificial intelligence as a key reason for the cuts.

Miranda Kerr posted a series of videos and photos from the festival on Instagram. The , the 42-year-old Australian supermodel and former Victoria's Secret Angel captioned the gallery simply as "A day in the desert." In one video, she is seen cuddling up to Spiegel as he plants a kiss on her forehead.

Kerr dressed in a green singlet top, black trousers and gold hoop earrings. She wore her hair in waves. Spiegel kept it low-key in a black top, sunglasses, a baseball cap and a black-and-white bandanna.

The couple watched performances by artists including Sabrina Carpenter, The xx and Holly Humberstone.

In the memo, Spiegel said the layoffs were “necessary” for Snap to move towards profitability. Advances in AI would allow the company to do more with fewer people, he said.

“While these changes are necessary to realise Snap’s long-term potential, we believe that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote.

The cuts followed a letter from activist investor Irenic Capital Management to Spiegel last month. It pressed him to reduce costs and headcount while criticising the company's current business strategy.

“He is rich, not his employees. Why the entitlement?” wondered a social media user.

“Why do people keep not seeing that the top 1% don’t care about the bottom 99%? Making your fortune is great, but spreading the wealth & still having more money than you can ever spend is just about greed!” commented another user.

One user posted, “This is why capitalism disgusts me. Having been laid off more times than I can count during 35 years as a software engineer, the people give their all, then get shafted, so the company can make yet more profits. SICK.”

“Billionaire CEO doesn’t give a sh*t about his employees, what a shock,” came a sarcastic reply.

However, several experts and former employees have questioned whether AI is genuinely replacing workers. They wonder if AI is simply used as a convenient excuse to downsize.

Even venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who supports AI, recently said that some firms were using AI as a cover for having been overstaffed earlier.

“Now, they all have the silver-bullet excuse: ah, it’s AI,” Andreessen said on 20VC with Harry Stebbings.