WiseTech Staff Blast Handling of AI-Led Redundancies: 'We Are Human'

WiseTech Global staff have confronted management over a drawn-out AI-driven redundancy program, telling executives the process has stripped them of dignity and left hundreds of employees in limbo for months.

The backlash coincides with the logistics software giant losing one of its largest customers, Danish freight forwarder DSV, in a blow Jefferies analysts estimate will cost roughly $AU207 million in annual revenue.

First flagged in February, the redundancies will cut roughly 2,000 roles. That is about 30 percent of the company’s workforce. Three months on, many affected staff still have not been given formal notice.

An Australian Financial Review report detailed internal frustration at both the pace and the opacity of the process. Staff described a rolling uncertainty in which colleagues were pulled into meetings without warning, while those who remained were left guessing whether their roles would survive the next round.

“We are human,” staff told management at a tense all-hands meeting, pushing back against what they described as a mechanical, dehumanising approach to the cuts. The phrase has become a watchword inside the company, people familiar with the discussions told the AFR.

Driving the restructuring is an aggressive push into AI agents. Executive chairman Richard White told the AFR earlier this month that WiseTech can now code an AI agent in 15 minutes, describing the agents as “cheaper and more proficient than many human tech workers.”

That framing has not landed well.

Staff have told management the company’s language around the cuts treats people as interchangeable with software modules, according to people familiar with the discussions. Some employees who have been with WiseTech for more than a decade received the news in brief, scripted conversations, they said. Others learnt their fate from colleagues rather than managers, compounding a sense that the process was being run by spreadsheet rather than by people who understood the careers being ended.

The DSV blow

Beneath the staff unrest sits a bruising commercial setback. Danish logistics giant DSV — one of WiseTech’s anchor customers and the world’s third-largest freight forwarder — has begun migrating away from the CargoWise platform. The company handles roughly 2.5 million TEU of sea freight annually and its technology decisions carry weight across the global logistics sector.

Jefferies analysts estimate the departure will cost WiseTech roughly $AU207 million in annual revenue, or about 9 percent of its current revenue base. The loss is significant not only for its dollar size but for what it signals: DSV was a reference customer whose use of CargoWise validated the platform for other large forwarders evaluating a switch.

WiseTech has not publicly confirmed the DSV loss in dollar terms. Full-year results land in August, and investors will be watching for any commentary on customer retention metrics that have historically been a strength of the CargoWise ecosystem.

Both the customer defection and the workforce reduction have sharpened scrutiny of WiseTech’s executive leadership. CEO Zubin Appoo, who took the top role amid a turbulent period for the company that included AFP and ASIC searches of WiseTech offices in 2025, is attempting to steer the business through the transition while managing staff morale and market expectations that have been pulled in opposite directions by the AI pivot and the DSV departure.

What comes next

Buoyed by the AI narrative that has lifted tech stocks globally, WiseTech shares have rallied in recent weeks. But the DSV departure represents a concrete test of whether the company’s AI pivot can offset the loss of real freight-volume revenue flowing through CargoWise — revenue that does not return once a customer has rebuilt its operations on a competitor’s platform.

Across the broader Australian tech sector, WiseTech is being watched as a bellwether. If AI-driven restructuring at one of the ASX’s largest tech companies can proceed without delivering the promised efficiency gains — or worse, if it coincides with the loss of a marquee customer — the case for the AI pivot at other enterprise software firms weakens materially. CargoWise itself dominates global freight forwarding software with an estimated 40 percent market share among the top 25 forwarders, a position built over two decades. Losing DSV does not unravel that dominance, but it does give competitors an opening they have not had in years.

The redundancy process is expected to continue through mid-2026. For the staff still waiting to learn whether their role survives, the delay itself has become part of the grievance. Morale inside WiseTech’s Alexandria headquarters, once a point of pride for the company, has eroded to levels current and former employees describe as the lowest in memory.