• Barclays said it's cutting 5,000 jobs, or 5% of its workforce, in an AI push.
• Most of the cuts will impact support functions, including developers.
• Wall Street at large is grappling with how AI will transform both back- and front-office roles.

Barclays said it's cutting 5,000 jobs, or around 5% of its full-time workforce, as it increases its reliance on AI.

The British bank said in its third-quarter earnings statement that it is "structurally reducing" its costs through "technology-enabled" head count reductions.

Barclays laid out the numbers in its accompanying earnings presentation, linking the cuts specifically to "organisational simplification and technology change efficiency driven by AI."

Around 60% of the cuts will impact support functions, including developers, according to the presentation. Coding has become one of the main business use cases for AI across industries, causing some companies to cut back on developers.

Anna Cross, Barclays' group finance director, said the layoffs come as "AI makes our people more productive."

"Nowhere in the bank is this more relevant than in Barclays UK, where we have taken more structural cost actions than planned in '26," she said on the earnings call.

Wall Street is grappling with how AI will impact head count for both back- and front-office roles, as much of junior bankers' technical, repetitive workload can be automated. Some executives have said they're looking for young people with sharp judgment and communication skills rather than just analytical brainpower, as AI places an even greater premium on client interactions.

Goldman Sachs said in a memo last year that it plans to "restrain head count growth," and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said he will likely hire fewer bankers and more "AI people."

Barclays joins a growing list of companies that have announced AI-related layoffs this year, including Snap and Coinbase. Business Insider analyzed 15 layoff memos earlier this year and found that "AI" was the most commonly used term.

AI hasn't always led to companies cutting back. Some companies have increased hiring, while others have cut some roles and hired more for others.

• President Donald Trump said data center companies should pay a "dividend" to local communities.
• In a Truth Social post, Trump said the payments could boost the controversial projects' popularity.
• Data centers have sparked widespread public backlash, worrying some investors.

President Donald Trump said that data center companies should pay local communities a "dividend" to make their projects "popular."

In a Truth Social post early Wednesday, Trump urged companies to "MAKE DEALS," but did not provide details on how much money they should return to communities or individuals where data centers are being built.

"I have watched the process closely, and Data Centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck," he wrote in the post.

There's been a growing backlash against data center construction across the US, with some saying the projects are noisy, raise electricity bills, and compromise the general quality of living.

Data centers are becoming an increasingly important issue in next month's midterm elections, and some politicians have shifted how they talk about the projects in recent months. Data Center Watch, a research project run by 10a Labs, found that in the first quarter of this year, at least 75 data center projects were delayed or canceled due to local opposition.

Some companies have already started trying to placate unhappy locals with money or discounts.

This summer, Elon Musk's SpaceX offered eligible Memphis residents a 50% discount on its Starlink internet service, tied to its growing AI build-out in the city. NorthPoint Development opted for a pure cash incentive and said it would pay every household in a Pennsylvania township $10,000 if it got permission to build a data center, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

In his Wednesday post, Trump also referenced one of his previous efforts: having tech companies cover their power costs when they build data centers to help keep local electricity prices flat.

Several tech leaders agreed to do so in March, when they signed the "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," which mandates that companies provide or pay for the power generation and electricity needed for their AI projects, among other commitments.

Trump closed his Wednesday post by saying that building data centers under his newest stipulations would be "GREAT FOR THE U.S.A."

• Multiple banking apps in the UK, including Revolut, faced disruptions on Tuesday morning.
• Google Cloud experienced issues with its London-based cloud region and has since said services are coming back.
• Revolut said in a statement that customers' money was safe while it investigated the disruption.

Google said it had largely resolved a cloud outage that appeared to knock out a number of online banking services.

The company said in an update at around 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday that the problem had been mitigated for the most part, with "a very small number" of customers still experiencing issues.

Google had said the outage had been caused by a "power event" at its europe-west2-b zone, which is based in London.

A handful of banking apps and services, including Halifax and Revolut, reported issues on Tuesday that coincided with Google Cloud's disruptions. Some companies said that the Google Cloud outage was the cause, while others attributed it to an unnamed third-party provider.

Users of some affected banking apps said in social media posts early Tuesday that they couldn't make card payments, log in to the app, or transfer money.

"We can confirm that all our customers' money and data are safe. We've been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologize to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused," Revolut said in a statement earlier in the day. The outage was due to Google Cloud, a person familiar with the matter said.

"We're aware some customers are having issues with our app and online. We're sorry about this and are working hard to fix it," Halifax posted on X.

Emma, a popular UK budgeting app, also reported outages on Tuesday. "Emma is currently down due to a Google Cloud outage affecting services in London since 7 a.m. This is a technical outage, not a security issue," the company said on X.

Some took to X to share how the outage was disrupting their lives. One person said they'd had to cancel their beauty appointments in Japan, and another said their card was declined at the airport and they couldn't reach the support team.

The outage appears to have affected non-finance companies, too, according to Downdetector, a site that tracks online service disruptions.

Earlier on Tuesday, an X account for DPD, a delivery service, said in a post that its website was affected, and the web-hosting platform SiteGround said the outage has hit its UK data center. SiteGround said in its post that its engineers were working with Google Cloud engineers to address the issue.

The UK's courts and tribunal service said that it was experiencing issues with its cloud-based video tools for remote hearings on Tuesday. "We're working with our technology partners to restore service," an account for the government service wrote in an X post.

The Google Cloud outage comes as the tech giant has competed with Amazon and Microsoft to win business from enterprises, startups, and governments, particularly amid the AI boom. Reliability is a big promise built into these deals, as outages can have costly consequences for customers.

Google is not alone in being affected by outages, though: Amazon, Microsoft, and others have suffered downtime this year.