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The running list: major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI | TechCrunch
Oracle disclosed Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including jobs eliminated because of AI. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing. 

The revelation puts new numbers to what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. 







We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the headcount they’re now cutting was hired during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what’s really going on. Below, a running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.



GitLab — June 3, 2026. In one of the most recent cuts on this list, GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company had begun a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of 4 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur  to  million in restructuring costs.

Google — ongoing through May. Alphabet’s Google has quietly cut employees across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity staff, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to exceed  billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over 0 billion. Over the past year, Google has cut more than a third of the managers overseeing small teams — 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number — the cuts have come through a rolling performance review process, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates putting the 2026 total at between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers.

Intuit — May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs — about 17% of its total workforce — in a restructuring centered on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told staff the company is reducing complexity and simplifying the structure, so it can deliver better products.

Meta — May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (that they reportedly hate). Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because “success isn’t a given” in AI. 


Cisco — May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it’s cutting nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson said: “This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning … resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.” 

Cloudflare — May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of 9.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and the highest single quarter in company history. CEO Matthew Prince wrote that “the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers” — middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition. 

General Motors — May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision but that it wasn’t the only reason. GM’s statement said it was “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.” Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles.







Coinbase — May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange said it was cutting about 700 employees, or 14% of its staff, as part of a restructuring aimed at addressing market volatility and increasing AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO, and said it would experiment with “one-person teams” combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically — “engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” — and that the company needed to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.” 

PayPal — May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years — north of 4,500 jobs — as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would “aggressively adopt AI” in its development processes and formed a new “AI transformation and simplification” team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company’s processes “function by function.” Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.Microsoft — April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing how many employees these would impact. CFO Amy Hood said total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3, and is expected to keep declining as the company focuses on “building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility” amid rising AI investment.

Snap — April 16, 2026. Snap cut roughly 16% of its global workforce — about 1,000 full-time employees — and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. “Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company said it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency.

IBM — rolling through 2026. Between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, estimates range from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated, bringing IBM’s cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as a routine rebalancing affecting “a low single-digit percentage” of its global workforce.

Atlassian — March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut about 1,600 jobs (10% of its workforce) to “rebalance” toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said: “Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people.’ But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.” Dell — Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell’s total workforce fell about 10% in fiscal 2026 — roughly 11,000 jobs — to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with 9 million spent on severance. The cuts came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.

Oracle — March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobs via terminal emails. The cuts came even as Oracle posted .7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to 3 billion — savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing.

Block — February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. Dorsey wrote on X: “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” He added: “I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.” Salesforce — February 10, 2026. Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit. The company told Fortune, “Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles.” This followed an earlier cut of about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying the company needed “less heads” because AI agents handle the work. Amazon — January 28, 2026. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 — about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of “strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that, “As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today… in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#running #list #major #tech #layoffs #employers #cited #TechCrunchAI,Layoffs

The running list: major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI | TechCrunch

Oracle disclosed Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including jobs eliminated because of AI. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing.

The revelation puts new numbers to what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the headcount they’re now cutting was hired during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what’s really going on. Below, a running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.



GitLab — June 3, 2026. In one of the most recent cuts on this list, GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company had begun a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs.

Google — ongoing through May. Alphabet’s Google has quietly cut employees across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity staff, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to exceed $20 billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has cut more than a third of the managers overseeing small teams — 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number — the cuts have come through a rolling performance review process, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates putting the 2026 total at between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers.

Intuit — May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs — about 17% of its total workforce — in a restructuring centered on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told staff the company is reducing complexity and simplifying the structure, so it can deliver better products.

Meta — May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (that they reportedly hate). Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because “success isn’t a given” in AI.

Cisco — May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it’s cutting nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson said: “This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning … resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.”

Cloudflare — May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and the highest single quarter in company history. CEO Matthew Prince wrote that “the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers” — middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition.

General Motors — May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision but that it wasn’t the only reason. GM’s statement said it was “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.” Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles.

Coinbase — May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange said it was cutting about 700 employees, or 14% of its staff, as part of a restructuring aimed at addressing market volatility and increasing AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO, and said it would experiment with “one-person teams” combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically — “engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” — and that the company needed to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”

PayPal — May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years — north of 4,500 jobs — as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would “aggressively adopt AI” in its development processes and formed a new “AI transformation and simplification” team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company’s processes “function by function.” Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.

Microsoft — April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing how many employees these would impact. CFO Amy Hood said total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3, and is expected to keep declining as the company focuses on “building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility” amid rising AI investment.

Snap — April 16, 2026. Snap cut roughly 16% of its global workforce — about 1,000 full-time employees — and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. “Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company said it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency.

IBM — rolling through 2026. Between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, estimates range from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated, bringing IBM’s cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as a routine rebalancing affecting “a low single-digit percentage” of its global workforce.

Atlassian — March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut about 1,600 jobs (10% of its workforce) to “rebalance” toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said: “Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people.’ But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”

Dell — Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell’s total workforce fell about 10% in fiscal 2026 — roughly 11,000 jobs — to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with $569 million spent on severance. The cuts came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.

Oracle — March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobs via terminal emails. The cuts came even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion — savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing.

Block — February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. Dorsey wrote on X: “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” He added: “I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.”

Salesforce — February 10, 2026. Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit. The company told Fortune, “Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles.” This followed an earlier cut of about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying the company needed “less heads” because AI agents handle the work.

Amazon — January 28, 2026. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 — about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of “strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that, “As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today… in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#running #list #major #tech #layoffs #employers #cited #TechCrunchAI,Layoffs

Oracle disclosed Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including jobs eliminated because of AI. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing.

The revelation puts new numbers to what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the headcount they’re now cutting was hired during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what’s really going on. Below, a running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor.


GitLab — June 3, 2026. In one of the most recent cuts on this list, GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company had begun a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs.

Google — ongoing through May. Alphabet’s Google has quietly cut employees across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity staff, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to exceed $20 billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has cut more than a third of the managers overseeing small teams — 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number — the cuts have come through a rolling performance review process, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates putting the 2026 total at between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers.

Intuit — May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs — about 17% of its total workforce — in a restructuring centered on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told staff the company is reducing complexity and simplifying the structure, so it can deliver better products.

Meta — May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (that they reportedly hate). Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because “success isn’t a given” in AI.

Cisco — May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it’s cutting nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson said: “This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning … resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.”

Cloudflare — May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and the highest single quarter in company history. CEO Matthew Prince wrote that “the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers” — middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition.

General Motors — May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision but that it wasn’t the only reason. GM’s statement said it was “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.” Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles.

Coinbase — May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange said it was cutting about 700 employees, or 14% of its staff, as part of a restructuring aimed at addressing market volatility and increasing AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO, and said it would experiment with “one-person teams” combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically — “engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” — and that the company needed to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.”

PayPal — May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years — north of 4,500 jobs — as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would “aggressively adopt AI” in its development processes and formed a new “AI transformation and simplification” team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company’s processes “function by function.” Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.

Microsoft — April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing how many employees these would impact. CFO Amy Hood said total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3, and is expected to keep declining as the company focuses on “building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility” amid rising AI investment.

Snap — April 16, 2026. Snap cut roughly 16% of its global workforce — about 1,000 full-time employees — and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. “Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company said it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency.

IBM — rolling through 2026. Between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, estimates range from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated, bringing IBM’s cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as a routine rebalancing affecting “a low single-digit percentage” of its global workforce.

Atlassian — March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut about 1,600 jobs (10% of its workforce) to “rebalance” toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said: “Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people.’ But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”

Dell — Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell’s total workforce fell about 10% in fiscal 2026 — roughly 11,000 jobs — to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with $569 million spent on severance. The cuts came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027.

Oracle — March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobs via terminal emails. The cuts came even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion — savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing.

Block — February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. Dorsey wrote on X: “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” He added: “I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes.”

Salesforce — February 10, 2026. Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit. The company told Fortune, “Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles.” This followed an earlier cut of about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying the company needed “less heads” because AI agents handle the work.

Amazon — January 28, 2026. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 — about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of “strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that, “As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today… in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

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What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?  

The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details. 

The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there. 

This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” 
 
Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  

There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around $12.1 billion out of the $14.8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. 
 
That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a $3.3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  

“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?  

The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details. 







The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there. 

This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.”  Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  


There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me.  That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  







“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay 

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said.  Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said.  Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK
Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. 
 
Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. 
 
Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.

U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK">This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?  

The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details. 







The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there. 

This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.”  Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  


There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me.  That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  







“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay 

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said.  Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said.  Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK

European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” 
 
Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  

There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around $12.1 billion out of the $14.8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. 
 
That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a $3.3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  

“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?  

The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details. 







The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there. 

This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.”  Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  


There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me.  That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  







“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay 

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said.  Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said.  Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK
Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. 
 
Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. 
 
Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.

U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK">This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch

What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?  

The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details. 

The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there. 

This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.” 
 
Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  

There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around $12.1 billion out of the $14.8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me. 
 
That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a $3.3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  

“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

This former notorious red-light district is now one of the world’s top AI hubs | TechCrunch
What every U.K. AI startup wants to know these days is, how can I get office space in King’s Cross?  

The area is so hot that a VC firm allegedly recently won a deal by promising a founder office space in the neighborhood. “We stop at nothing to win deals [for] and to support” founders, “including helping them source office space when needed,” the firm told me when asked about the rumor, declining to confirm or deny any details. 







The neighborhood’s popularity began back in 2016 when DeepMind — then newly acquired by Google — moved in. Soon after, a flood of AI startups followed, wanting to be around the Google DeepMind magic. Today, they hope to take advantage of the cluster of AI talent there. 

This has transformed King’s Cross into one of the world’s top AI hubs, rivaled only by San Francisco and Beijing. Around London, it’s known by the sobriquet “Knowledge Quarter,” as it’s home to names like OpenAI, Meta, Isomorphic Labs, Cusp AI, Wayne, Recursive, and, a little farther down the road, Synthesia and Anthropic. The European Technology Network (ETN) just moved into a glossy new office nearby, while University College London sits around the corner.  

Mixed in with the new developments are trendy food spots like Hoppers and BAO. Hop a train from King’s Cross, and founders can be in Cambridge in 45 minutes to source talent or can be in Paris in two hours to strike a deal.  

Who would have guessed that a little more than 20 years ago, this was one of the seediest areas in London?  

“In the ’80s, crack and heroin made the area a major narcotics market,” Hussein Kanji, an investor at Hoxton Ventures, said, recalling syringes in tree trunks and gangs patrolling the streets. “In 1982, the local church was occupied by the English Collective of Prostitutes for 12 straight days.” Then, in the early 2000s, a real estate developer had a dream and, well, “now it is the AI hotbed of the United Kingdom,” Kanji said. “What a change.”  Around 18 months ago, his portfolio company BioCorteX moved from the neighborhood Holborn to the Jellicoe building in King’s Cross, hoping to be near the action. “Lots going on in London right now,” Nik Sharma, co-founder of BioCorteX, told me. “Lots of hyperscalers moving in.” That includes, reportedly, Jeff Bezos’ AI company Prometheus, which is also said to be in talks to move into the Jellicoe.  


There are around 3,600 AI startups in London, which, together, have raised around .1 billion out of the .8 billion raised in the city since late July, according to Dealroom. Since the start of June, AI-related startups have leased more than 1 million square feet of office space in London, according to the real estate firm Knight Frank. With that, prime rents in King’s Cross have risen 18% over the past three years, Chris Dunn, a commercial insight associate at the firm, told me.  That percentage represents only the largest leases encompassing at least 10,000 square feet, like the ones OpenAI and Prometheus are signing. The shorter deals go for even more, he said, and now the vacancy rate for conventional office space is just 0.9%. “Demand has outstripped supply,” he continued.  

Today, one of the big topics of the area is sovereignty. It was a wake-up call for many when Anthropic shut off access to Mythos and Fable this summer, leaving some in the ecosystem to conclude: “We’d better look after ourselves,” Saul Klein, co-founder of the VC firm Phoenix Court, told me.  

Phoenix Court is located in the King’s Cross area and has three portfolio companies in the vicinity, including Olix (which just announced a .3 billion valuation), Early Health and CoMind. Robin Klein, co-founder of the firm, said the shutdown of Fable and Mythos access was a “small but sharp reminder that Europe can’t simply rent its AI capabilities and capacity; it needs to build and hold some of its own.” King’s Cross, he said, is where much of this building is actually happening.  







“The bigger question,” he continued, “is whether the U.K. builds the infrastructure, compute, energy, capital, to make this self-reliance durable, rather than just hosting outposts of U.S. labs.” 

Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay 

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said.  Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said.  Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK
Image Credits:Phoenix Court

Top founders want to stay

Simon Kohl, founder of Latent Labs, has offices in King’s Cross and San Francisco. The London office, at the moment, is growing faster, and he’s more bullish than ever on the ecosystem, he said. “The mood right now feels less like London trying to catch up and more like London becoming one of the default places to start a serious AI company,” he said. 
 
Look around and you are likely to see Wayve testing its autonomous cars. Founded in 2017 by co-founder Alex Kendall, the unicorn is one of London’s biggest success stories.  

“Ten years ago, building a frontier AI company from London felt like an unusual choice,” Kendall told me. “Now it feels like an obvious one.” Wayve moved into King’s Cross in 2018 looking for a space that could double as a garage — “a rare combination in Central London,” Kendall said. He has watched the ecosystem mature around him — and it’s now evident that a startup can stay in London, raise serious capital, hire world-class AI talent, and remain globally competitive, he said. 
 
Down the street from Anthropic’s new 158,000-square-foot office is the AI agent builder Sierra and the AI video platform Synthesia. 

Laura Gonzalez Florez, Synthesia’s chief of staff and head of people, says the company moved into its glossy new office building a year ago to accommodate its growing team. They were drawn to the area for the same reason as everyone else: “It’s very close to the airport … very close to where a lot of investors are,” she said. 

Image Credits:Synthesia

Around two-thirds of Synthesia’s engineers are remote, Gonzalez Florez said, letting the company tap into an affordable, international, and diverse talent pool and helping it scale faster. “From London, we can hire and work, without any problem, people from anywhere, from Slovenia to Portugal,” she said.  

Unsurprisingly, London’s AI boom is also causing a talent war.

U.K. AI job postings have skyrocketed in the past few years, per data from PwC. When Anthropic announced it moved into town earlier this year, it listed, for example, a salary range of £260,000 to £630,000 for a machine learning research engineer when the average salary in London for the same role is around £102,000. Some founders in the U.K., like those in Silicon Valley, are being forced to raise more and bigger rounds to keep up. 

“The real test is whether more globally significant AI companies are founded, funded, and scaled from the U.K., while continuing to attract the world’s best talent to build them here,” Zain Ali, founder of the King’s Cross-based AI legal firm Centuro, told me. “If that continues to happen, King’s Cross won’t just be an AI hub. It’ll become one of the U.K.’s most important strategic assets.”

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Thisformernotorious #redlight #districtis #nowone #worlds #top #hubs #TechCrunchUK
Why Remote Server Access Is a Common Attack Vector

Every cloud server exposes at least one remote access point – usually SSH on port 22 – and that port is scanned constantly by bots looking for weak credentials. Password-based login is the most common way a system can be attacked by brute force, and it is quite common with a standard setup that the system is left in a state where an admin/user of that system – “root user” – can log in directly by guessing the user ID and the password combination. Add in shared team credentials, forgotten firewall rules from old projects, and staging servers left publicly reachable, and it’s clear why misconfigured remote access – not zero-day exploits – is behind most cloud server compromises. The fix is simple, though you’ll need to do some setup yourself instead of trusting the default setting.

How to lock down SSH access in the right way

The best way to secure remote access is through a series of small improvements rather than one major overhaul. The following is a real working method:

  1. Switch to SSH key authentication, then turn off password login completely in the same location: sshd_config. Keys are far harder to brute-force than passwords.
  2. Disable root login over SSH and require a non-root user with sudo privileges instead; this is a security advantage that even without any change, one key compromising would limit the impact.
  3. Change the default SSH port away from 22 to cut down on automated scanning noise (not a security measure on its own, but it reduces log clutter).
  4. Restrict access by IP using your firewall or security group, allowing SSH only from known office or VPN IP ranges rather than the entire internet.
  5. Add a VPN as a connection layer for anyone accessing servers from outside a trusted network – a VPN like Planet VPN’s free VPN service can encrypt the connection between a remote worker’s laptop and the server before SSH traffic ever leaves their device, which matters especially on public wi-fi or shared networks.

Every step you take closes the doors that the attacker may open slightly, and when you combine everything, you would have a door to a series of locked gates.

Why Do I Need a Bastion Host?

When it comes to teams working with many servers, deploying a bastion host (jump box) may be a clean and effective way to solve the long-term problem. With this method, you only expose SSH to the bastion, and the other servers accept it only when it’s from the bastion’s internal IP. This centralizes logging and makes auditing access far simpler.

Using a virtual private network (VPN) and a bastion host together is perfectly fine – and many solutions use both: a safe way to access the private network via a VPN, followed by use of a bastion host to restrict which servers can be accessed. Some teams may decide to forgo the bastion because they don’t have the manpower to manage one, and so use a combination of a VPN and a set of firewall rules that still quite a bit lowers the exposure, but without the extra effort.

Mistakes Leading to Leaving Cloud Servers Open

The Mistakes That Cause Leaving Cloud Servers Open: Even the safest development teams may have slip-ups from time to time. One of the most frequent is leaving staged, or test servers with relaxed firewall rules equivalent to those of the production environment – hackers don’t concern themselves with which environment they first land on. Another frequent error is reusing the same SSH key on several servers and clients, causing one hacked laptop to compromise all servers that key has access to.

Another common human error is not removing or changing access when someone leaves the team, so stale credentials remain valid and accessible. At last, putting trust in the strategy of “security through obscurity” – meaning one thinks that setting up the unusual port or hiding the hostname from the public is actually sufficient security – creates a wrong impression of security. This is mostly true; in reality, modern-day attackers scan all ports anyway, and there is no way to hide from them.

System Administrators Guide to Secure Remote Access 

Prohibit SSH password logins totally and depend exclusively on key-based authentication

  • Surely no one wants to type in the password every time; because of this, use only key-based authentication 
  • Deter the user from logging in as root by default and instead use the sudo command to do root tasks
  • A firewall or security group rule can provide great help with IP address-based restrictions on SSH logins 
  • For access that comes from untrusted sources or external networks, use a secure tunnel like a vpn or bastion host
  • Periodically change SSH keys and inspect access lists
  • Maintain records of login attempts and detect brute-force attacks as quickly as possible

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the principal means by which cloud servers suffer break-ins through remote access?

By far the biggest reason why this can happen is unauthorized password-based SSH logins that have been cracked by brute force. The scenario is most likely to develop where the administrator allows root login via password and leaves the default port open.

Sufficient security measures for the server via SSH keys: Do you think it is safe to rely only on key authentication? 

It is true that SSH keys drastically decrease the danger of a successful brute-force attack. However, if there is only key authentication on the server, there are still risks – the server administrator can always enable root login or disable the IP-based login restrictions. So it is recommended to always have these three in the server configuration: disabled root login, restricted access to known IPs, and rotating the keys regularly as the main components of meaningful protection. 

Is it really necessary to set up a separate VPN network while I am able to connect via SSH keys? 

A VPN gives extra security by first encrypting your computer traffic before it reaches your network, where the SSH connection will be used. This is mostly important when working on untrusted networks – like public wi-fi – where there is a threat of a potential hacker in your local network looking at your data.

Bastion host vs VPN as methods of accessing the server? 

The bastion host works by funneling SSH sessions from many users through a single, carefully monitored server point while the rest of the network (and mostly the servers) remains protected from the internet. At the same time, a vpn will fully encrypt the communication between the user and the corporate network or servers. The combination is very common among larger security teams as a part of the defense-in-depth principle. 

How often should SSH keys be rotated? 

The ideal period to change your SSH keys depends on the security practices of your organization, but generally a good practice is to change SSH keys between 90 and 180 days, or in the case that the user who had access with the key leaves or is no longer able to be contacted, such as when a team member leaves.

Why is only changing the port number for SSH enough to secure that port?

Changing the port reduces automated scanning noise in your logs but isn’t a real security control on its own — port scanners check all ports, so it should never replace key-based auth and firewall rules.

#Secure #Remote #Access #Cloud #ServerCloud,remote access">How to Secure Remote Access to Your Cloud Server in 2026
	
Protection against unauthorized remote logins to your cloud server is a matter of SSH key-based authentication, a strict security policy on the firewall, two-factor authentication, and a secure communication channel – no individual component will give adequate protection by itself. The major risk point in breaches is not the server but the open door to remote login. To patch that vulnerability, you need a series of countermeasures, not a magical setting.





Why Remote Server Access Is a Common Attack Vector



Every cloud server exposes at least one remote access point – usually SSH on port 22 – and that port is scanned constantly by bots looking for weak credentials. Password-based login is the most common way a system can be attacked by brute force, and it is quite common with a standard setup that the system is left in a state where an admin/user of that system – “root user” – can log in directly by guessing the user ID and the password combination. Add in shared team credentials, forgotten firewall rules from old projects, and staging servers left publicly reachable, and it’s clear why misconfigured remote access – not zero-day exploits – is behind most cloud server compromises. The fix is simple, though you’ll need to do some setup yourself instead of trusting the default setting.



How to lock down SSH access in the right way



The best way to secure remote access is through a series of small improvements rather than one major overhaul. The following is a real working method:




Switch to SSH key authentication, then turn off password login completely in the same location: sshd_config. Keys are far harder to brute-force than passwords.



Disable root login over SSH and require a non-root user with sudo privileges instead; this is a security advantage that even without any change, one key compromising would limit the impact.



Change the default SSH port away from 22 to cut down on automated scanning noise (not a security measure on its own, but it reduces log clutter).



Restrict access by IP using your firewall or security group, allowing SSH only from known office or VPN IP ranges rather than the entire internet.



Add a VPN as a connection layer for anyone accessing servers from outside a trusted network – a VPN like Planet VPN’s free VPN service can encrypt the connection between a remote worker’s laptop and the server before SSH traffic ever leaves their device, which matters especially on public wi-fi or shared networks.




Every step you take closes the doors that the attacker may open slightly, and when you combine everything, you would have a door to a series of locked gates.



Why Do I Need a Bastion Host?



When it comes to teams working with many servers, deploying a bastion host (jump box) may be a clean and effective way to solve the long-term problem. With this method, you only expose SSH to the bastion, and the other servers accept it only when it’s from the bastion’s internal IP. This centralizes logging and makes auditing access far simpler.



Using a virtual private network (VPN) and a bastion host together is perfectly fine – and many solutions use both: a safe way to access the private network via a VPN, followed by use of a bastion host to restrict which servers can be accessed. Some teams may decide to forgo the bastion because they don’t have the manpower to manage one, and so use a combination of a VPN and a set of firewall rules that still quite a bit lowers the exposure, but without the extra effort.



Mistakes Leading to Leaving Cloud Servers Open



The Mistakes That Cause Leaving Cloud Servers Open: Even the safest development teams may have slip-ups from time to time. One of the most frequent is leaving staged, or test servers with relaxed firewall rules equivalent to those of the production environment – hackers don’t concern themselves with which environment they first land on. Another frequent error is reusing the same SSH key on several servers and clients, causing one hacked laptop to compromise all servers that key has access to.



Another common human error is not removing or changing access when someone leaves the team, so stale credentials remain valid and accessible. At last, putting trust in the strategy of “security through obscurity” – meaning one thinks that setting up the unusual port or hiding the hostname from the public is actually sufficient security – creates a wrong impression of security. This is mostly true; in reality, modern-day attackers scan all ports anyway, and there is no way to hide from them.



System Administrators Guide to Secure Remote Access 



Prohibit SSH password logins totally and depend exclusively on key-based authentication




Surely no one wants to type in the password every time; because of this, use only key-based authentication 



Deter the user from logging in as root by default and instead use the sudo command to do root tasks



A firewall or security group rule can provide great help with IP address-based restrictions on SSH logins 



For access that comes from untrusted sources or external networks, use a secure tunnel like a vpn or bastion host



Periodically change SSH keys and inspect access lists



Maintain records of login attempts and detect brute-force attacks as quickly as possible




Frequently Asked Questions



What is the principal means by which cloud servers suffer break-ins through remote access? By far the biggest reason why this can happen is unauthorized password-based SSH logins that have been cracked by brute force. The scenario is most likely to develop where the administrator allows root login via password and leaves the default port open.  Sufficient security measures for the server via SSH keys: Do you think it is safe to rely only on key authentication?  It is true that SSH keys drastically decrease the danger of a successful brute-force attack. However, if there is only key authentication on the server, there are still risks – the server administrator can always enable root login or disable the IP-based login restrictions. So it is recommended to always have these three in the server configuration: disabled root login, restricted access to known IPs, and rotating the keys regularly as the main components of meaningful protection.   Is it really necessary to set up a separate VPN network while I am able to connect via SSH keys?  A VPN gives extra security by first encrypting your computer traffic before it reaches your network, where the SSH connection will be used. This is mostly important when working on untrusted networks – like public wi-fi – where there is a threat of a potential hacker in your local network looking at your data.  Bastion host vs VPN as methods of accessing the server?  The bastion host works by funneling SSH sessions from many users through a single, carefully monitored server point while the rest of the network (and mostly the servers) remains protected from the internet. At the same time, a vpn will fully encrypt the communication between the user and the corporate network or servers. The combination is very common among larger security teams as a part of the defense-in-depth principle.   How often should SSH keys be rotated?  The ideal period to change your SSH keys depends on the security practices of your organization, but generally a good practice is to change SSH keys between 90 and 180 days, or in the case that the user who had access with the key leaves or is no longer able to be contacted, such as when a team member leaves.  Why is only changing the port number for SSH enough to secure that port? Changing the port reduces automated scanning noise in your logs but isn’t a real security control on its own — port scanners check all ports, so it should never replace key-based auth and firewall rules.  





#Secure #Remote #Access #Cloud #ServerCloud,remote access

  1. free VPN service can encrypt the connection between a remote worker’s laptop and the server before SSH traffic ever leaves their device, which matters especially on public wi-fi or shared networks.

Every step you take closes the doors that the attacker may open slightly, and when you combine everything, you would have a door to a series of locked gates.

Why Do I Need a Bastion Host?

When it comes to teams working with many servers, deploying a bastion host (jump box) may be a clean and effective way to solve the long-term problem. With this method, you only expose SSH to the bastion, and the other servers accept it only when it’s from the bastion’s internal IP. This centralizes logging and makes auditing access far simpler.

Using a virtual private network (VPN) and a bastion host together is perfectly fine – and many solutions use both: a safe way to access the private network via a VPN, followed by use of a bastion host to restrict which servers can be accessed. Some teams may decide to forgo the bastion because they don’t have the manpower to manage one, and so use a combination of a VPN and a set of firewall rules that still quite a bit lowers the exposure, but without the extra effort.

Mistakes Leading to Leaving Cloud Servers Open

The Mistakes That Cause Leaving Cloud Servers Open: Even the safest development teams may have slip-ups from time to time. One of the most frequent is leaving staged, or test servers with relaxed firewall rules equivalent to those of the production environment – hackers don’t concern themselves with which environment they first land on. Another frequent error is reusing the same SSH key on several servers and clients, causing one hacked laptop to compromise all servers that key has access to.

Another common human error is not removing or changing access when someone leaves the team, so stale credentials remain valid and accessible. At last, putting trust in the strategy of “security through obscurity” – meaning one thinks that setting up the unusual port or hiding the hostname from the public is actually sufficient security – creates a wrong impression of security. This is mostly true; in reality, modern-day attackers scan all ports anyway, and there is no way to hide from them.

System Administrators Guide to Secure Remote Access 

Prohibit SSH password logins totally and depend exclusively on key-based authentication

  • Surely no one wants to type in the password every time; because of this, use only key-based authentication 
  • Deter the user from logging in as root by default and instead use the sudo command to do root tasks
  • A firewall or security group rule can provide great help with IP address-based restrictions on SSH logins 
  • For access that comes from untrusted sources or external networks, use a secure tunnel like a vpn or bastion host
  • Periodically change SSH keys and inspect access lists
  • Maintain records of login attempts and detect brute-force attacks as quickly as possible

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the principal means by which cloud servers suffer break-ins through remote access?

By far the biggest reason why this can happen is unauthorized password-based SSH logins that have been cracked by brute force. The scenario is most likely to develop where the administrator allows root login via password and leaves the default port open.

Sufficient security measures for the server via SSH keys: Do you think it is safe to rely only on key authentication? 

It is true that SSH keys drastically decrease the danger of a successful brute-force attack. However, if there is only key authentication on the server, there are still risks – the server administrator can always enable root login or disable the IP-based login restrictions. So it is recommended to always have these three in the server configuration: disabled root login, restricted access to known IPs, and rotating the keys regularly as the main components of meaningful protection. 

Is it really necessary to set up a separate VPN network while I am able to connect via SSH keys? 

A VPN gives extra security by first encrypting your computer traffic before it reaches your network, where the SSH connection will be used. This is mostly important when working on untrusted networks – like public wi-fi – where there is a threat of a potential hacker in your local network looking at your data.

Bastion host vs VPN as methods of accessing the server? 

The bastion host works by funneling SSH sessions from many users through a single, carefully monitored server point while the rest of the network (and mostly the servers) remains protected from the internet. At the same time, a vpn will fully encrypt the communication between the user and the corporate network or servers. The combination is very common among larger security teams as a part of the defense-in-depth principle. 

How often should SSH keys be rotated? 

The ideal period to change your SSH keys depends on the security practices of your organization, but generally a good practice is to change SSH keys between 90 and 180 days, or in the case that the user who had access with the key leaves or is no longer able to be contacted, such as when a team member leaves.

Why is only changing the port number for SSH enough to secure that port?

Changing the port reduces automated scanning noise in your logs but isn’t a real security control on its own — port scanners check all ports, so it should never replace key-based auth and firewall rules.

#Secure #Remote #Access #Cloud #ServerCloud,remote access">How to Secure Remote Access to Your Cloud Server in 2026

Protection against unauthorized remote logins to your cloud server is a matter of SSH key-based authentication, a strict security policy on the firewall, two-factor authentication, and a secure communication channel – no individual component will give adequate protection by itself. The major risk point in breaches is not the server but the open door to remote login. To patch that vulnerability, you need a series of countermeasures, not a magical setting.

Why Remote Server Access Is a Common Attack Vector

Every cloud server exposes at least one remote access point – usually SSH on port 22 – and that port is scanned constantly by bots looking for weak credentials. Password-based login is the most common way a system can be attacked by brute force, and it is quite common with a standard setup that the system is left in a state where an admin/user of that system – “root user” – can log in directly by guessing the user ID and the password combination. Add in shared team credentials, forgotten firewall rules from old projects, and staging servers left publicly reachable, and it’s clear why misconfigured remote access – not zero-day exploits – is behind most cloud server compromises. The fix is simple, though you’ll need to do some setup yourself instead of trusting the default setting.

How to lock down SSH access in the right way

The best way to secure remote access is through a series of small improvements rather than one major overhaul. The following is a real working method:

  1. Switch to SSH key authentication, then turn off password login completely in the same location: sshd_config. Keys are far harder to brute-force than passwords.
  2. Disable root login over SSH and require a non-root user with sudo privileges instead; this is a security advantage that even without any change, one key compromising would limit the impact.
  3. Change the default SSH port away from 22 to cut down on automated scanning noise (not a security measure on its own, but it reduces log clutter).
  4. Restrict access by IP using your firewall or security group, allowing SSH only from known office or VPN IP ranges rather than the entire internet.
  5. Add a VPN as a connection layer for anyone accessing servers from outside a trusted network – a VPN like Planet VPN’s free VPN service can encrypt the connection between a remote worker’s laptop and the server before SSH traffic ever leaves their device, which matters especially on public wi-fi or shared networks.

Every step you take closes the doors that the attacker may open slightly, and when you combine everything, you would have a door to a series of locked gates.

Why Do I Need a Bastion Host?

When it comes to teams working with many servers, deploying a bastion host (jump box) may be a clean and effective way to solve the long-term problem. With this method, you only expose SSH to the bastion, and the other servers accept it only when it’s from the bastion’s internal IP. This centralizes logging and makes auditing access far simpler.

Using a virtual private network (VPN) and a bastion host together is perfectly fine – and many solutions use both: a safe way to access the private network via a VPN, followed by use of a bastion host to restrict which servers can be accessed. Some teams may decide to forgo the bastion because they don’t have the manpower to manage one, and so use a combination of a VPN and a set of firewall rules that still quite a bit lowers the exposure, but without the extra effort.

Mistakes Leading to Leaving Cloud Servers Open

The Mistakes That Cause Leaving Cloud Servers Open: Even the safest development teams may have slip-ups from time to time. One of the most frequent is leaving staged, or test servers with relaxed firewall rules equivalent to those of the production environment – hackers don’t concern themselves with which environment they first land on. Another frequent error is reusing the same SSH key on several servers and clients, causing one hacked laptop to compromise all servers that key has access to.

Another common human error is not removing or changing access when someone leaves the team, so stale credentials remain valid and accessible. At last, putting trust in the strategy of “security through obscurity” – meaning one thinks that setting up the unusual port or hiding the hostname from the public is actually sufficient security – creates a wrong impression of security. This is mostly true; in reality, modern-day attackers scan all ports anyway, and there is no way to hide from them.

System Administrators Guide to Secure Remote Access 

Prohibit SSH password logins totally and depend exclusively on key-based authentication

  • Surely no one wants to type in the password every time; because of this, use only key-based authentication 
  • Deter the user from logging in as root by default and instead use the sudo command to do root tasks
  • A firewall or security group rule can provide great help with IP address-based restrictions on SSH logins 
  • For access that comes from untrusted sources or external networks, use a secure tunnel like a vpn or bastion host
  • Periodically change SSH keys and inspect access lists
  • Maintain records of login attempts and detect brute-force attacks as quickly as possible

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the principal means by which cloud servers suffer break-ins through remote access?

By far the biggest reason why this can happen is unauthorized password-based SSH logins that have been cracked by brute force. The scenario is most likely to develop where the administrator allows root login via password and leaves the default port open.

Sufficient security measures for the server via SSH keys: Do you think it is safe to rely only on key authentication? 

It is true that SSH keys drastically decrease the danger of a successful brute-force attack. However, if there is only key authentication on the server, there are still risks – the server administrator can always enable root login or disable the IP-based login restrictions. So it is recommended to always have these three in the server configuration: disabled root login, restricted access to known IPs, and rotating the keys regularly as the main components of meaningful protection. 

Is it really necessary to set up a separate VPN network while I am able to connect via SSH keys? 

A VPN gives extra security by first encrypting your computer traffic before it reaches your network, where the SSH connection will be used. This is mostly important when working on untrusted networks – like public wi-fi – where there is a threat of a potential hacker in your local network looking at your data.

Bastion host vs VPN as methods of accessing the server? 

The bastion host works by funneling SSH sessions from many users through a single, carefully monitored server point while the rest of the network (and mostly the servers) remains protected from the internet. At the same time, a vpn will fully encrypt the communication between the user and the corporate network or servers. The combination is very common among larger security teams as a part of the defense-in-depth principle. 

How often should SSH keys be rotated? 

The ideal period to change your SSH keys depends on the security practices of your organization, but generally a good practice is to change SSH keys between 90 and 180 days, or in the case that the user who had access with the key leaves or is no longer able to be contacted, such as when a team member leaves.

Why is only changing the port number for SSH enough to secure that port?

Changing the port reduces automated scanning noise in your logs but isn’t a real security control on its own — port scanners check all ports, so it should never replace key-based auth and firewall rules.

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