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Cybersecurity firm Deepwatch lays off dozens, citing move to “accelerate” AI investment

Deepwatch reportedly cut an estimated 60 to 80 jobs while citing accelerated investment in AI and automation. The evidence does not show that AI directly replaced the affected employees.
From TheFinanceBase Team6 min to read
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Deepwatch reportedly laid off an estimated 60 to 80 employees on November 12, 2025, as the cybersecurity company said it was redirecting resources to accelerate investment in artificial intelligence and automation. The estimate came from an anonymous current employee and was supported by LinkedIn posts from at least eight former employees reviewed by TechCrunch. Deepwatch did not publicly disclose a precise layoff total in the available reporting.

What happened at Deepwatch?

Deepwatch, a provider of managed detection and response (MDR) services, conducted layoffs on November 12, 2025. A current employee told TechCrunch that approximately 60 to 80 employees were affected.

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The same employee estimated that Deepwatch had about 250 workers before the cuts. If both estimates are accurate, the layoffs represented roughly 24% to 32% of the reported workforce—about one-quarter to one-third of the company. That percentage is approximate, because neither the headcount nor the layoff figure was presented as a precise official disclosure.

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TechCrunch also reviewed LinkedIn posts from at least eight former Deepwatch employees who said they had been laid off. A third-party layoffs tracker, TrueUp, listed 80 impacted employees, but identified that figure as employee-reported rather than an official company number.

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Why did Deepwatch cite AI and automation?

Deepwatch CEO John DiLullo told TechCrunch that the company was “aligning our organization to accelerate our significant investments in AI and automation.”

That statement describes a strategic reallocation of resources. It does not establish that artificial intelligence directly replaced the people who lost their jobs, that every affected role was connected to automation, or that AI was the only reason for the restructuring.

Companies can reorganize for several reasons at once, including funding new engineering work, consolidating teams, reducing operating costs, improving margins, or responding to changes in demand. The available reporting does not show which combination applied at Deepwatch.

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What Deepwatch does

Managed detection and response is a security service in which an outside provider continuously monitors a customer’s systems, investigates suspicious activity, and helps contain or respond to threats. It supplements—or, for some organizations, partially replaces—the customer’s internal security operations staff.

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Deepwatch’s current careers materials describe the company as building AI-native MDR. Its jobs page presents an AI-powered approach that combines automation, security orchestration, human expertise, and expert context through its Guardian MDR Platform.

That public positioning is consistent with management’s explanation for the layoffs, but it does not prove how much AI Deepwatch had deployed by November 2025 or what work its systems performed in practice. The company’s materials continue to emphasize human security expertise and oversight, so it would be inaccurate to characterize the event as Deepwatch abandoning human analysts.

Why AI is relevant to managed security

MDR providers process large volumes of alerts and security telemetry. Automation and AI can potentially help analysts:

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  • Prioritize alerts by apparent severity and context.
  • Correlate activity across endpoint, identity, cloud, and network data.
  • Summarize investigations and reduce repetitive documentation.
  • Suggest detection logic or next investigative steps.
  • Orchestrate routine response actions under defined controls.

These are general operational possibilities, not confirmed descriptions of specific Deepwatch systems. Human review remains important because security data can be incomplete, false positives can overwhelm teams, and an incorrect automated response can disrupt systems or destroy useful evidence.

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AI-assisted security operations also introduce risks such as false negatives, hallucinated explanations, prompt injection, data-poisoning attacks, privacy concerns, and difficulty auditing why an alert was suppressed or a response was recommended. Automation may reduce repetitive work, but it does not make judgment, accountability, or escalation unnecessary.

Did AI replace the laid-off employees?

The available evidence does not establish that. Three claims should be kept separate:

  1. Deepwatch said it was aligning the organization to accelerate AI and automation investment.
  2. The company may have been changing which functions and skills it prioritized.
  3. AI directly replaced the specific employees who were laid off.

The reporting supports the first claim. It does not provide enough evidence to confirm the second in detail, and it does not prove the third.

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One anonymous current employee questioned whether Deepwatch’s references to AI and “agentic AI” represented a substantive explanation. That skepticism is relevant context, but it is an anonymous opinion—not independent proof that the company’s stated strategy was insincere or that cost-cutting was the real cause.

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What remains unknown

The public account does not identify:

  • Which departments or job functions were affected.
  • Whether the cuts were concentrated in security operations, engineering, sales, customer success, or corporate roles.
  • Whether the layoffs affected only U.S. workers or employees in multiple countries.
  • Severance terms or benefits continuation.
  • The size of Deepwatch’s AI budget.
  • Whether Deepwatch had launched a named agentic-AI product.
  • Whether customers experienced changes in monitoring, response times, escalation coverage, or account support.
  • Whether revenue, financing, profitability, customer churn, or competitive pressure also contributed.

Those gaps matter. A lower headcount does not automatically mean worse service: automation could reduce repetitive workload while preserving analyst coverage. But substantial cuts could also affect overnight staffing, threat hunting, detection engineering, customer-specific knowledge, incident review, or escalation capacity. There is no evidence in the available reporting showing that any of those outcomes occurred at Deepwatch.

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How this fits the cybersecurity labor market

TechCrunch reported that other cybersecurity companies conducting layoffs in 2025 included CrowdStrike, Deep Instinct, Otorio, ActiveFence, SkyBox Security, and Sophos. CrowdStrike, for example, cut approximately 500 employees—about 5% of its workforce—in May 2025, according to the report.

Those comparisons provide industry context but not a single explanation. The companies differed in scale, funding, profitability, product category, and business model. A cybersecurity layoff is not automatically an AI layoff.

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Deepwatch’s case is notable because its CEO explicitly connected the restructuring to AI and automation investment. That makes it part of the broader debate over AI-led workforce changes, but it is not proof that cybersecurity companies generally are replacing employees with software.

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Strategic shift, cost reduction, or both?

There are three plausible interpretations of Deepwatch’s announcement:

  • Investment-led restructuring: The company may have redirected spending toward AI infrastructure, automation, and product development.
  • Conventional cost reduction: Management may have reduced staffing and described the reorganization through the lens of a prominent strategic priority.
  • A combination: Deepwatch may have sought both lower operating costs and a different mix of technical capabilities.

The available evidence cannot distinguish conclusively among these explanations. The most accurate description is therefore narrower: Deepwatch cut an estimated 60 to 80 jobs, and management said the organizational changes would accelerate AI and automation investment.

What customers and security buyers should watch

The layoffs alone do not show that Deepwatch’s service is unsafe or unsuitable. Customers evaluating the situation should look for concrete operational evidence rather than infer service quality from the headcount announcement.

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Useful questions for any MDR provider undergoing an AI-led restructuring include:

  • What work is automated, and what still requires human review?
  • How are AI-generated detections and response recommendations audited?
  • What happens if a model or automation system fails?
  • What staffing and escalation coverage is contractually guaranteed?
  • How is customer telemetry isolated and protected?
  • Can customers export detections, cases, and investigation history if they change providers?

For Deepwatch specifically, the clearest future indicators would be named AI product announcements, hiring for AI and detection-engineering roles, measurable changes to the Guardian MDR Platform, customer or partner announcements, and evidence that automation improves analyst productivity without reducing critical human oversight.

The bottom line

Deepwatch reportedly laid off dozens of employees—an estimated 60 to 80—on November 12, 2025. The company said the restructuring was intended to accelerate investment in AI and automation. That is a documented management rationale, not proof that AI directly replaced the affected workers or that the layoffs were solely technology-driven.

Until Deepwatch discloses more about the affected teams, its AI deployments, and any impact on customers, the event is best understood as an AI-linked organizational restructuring whose precise business and workforce consequences remain unresolved.

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