In a Bloomberg interview Wednesday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai dismissed fears that AI could wipe out half of the company’s 180,000-person workforce, calling the technology an “accelerator” rather than a replacement.

“AI allows us to do more,” Pichai said from San Francisco, emphasizing that it boosts engineering productivity by cutting out routine work. He expects hiring to continue into 2026 as AI enables faster product development.

Though Alphabet has made layoffs in recent years—12,000 in 2023 and over 1,000 in 2024—Pichai suggested recent cuts have been more targeted. Fewer than 100 roles were eliminated in the cloud unit earlier this year, followed by hundreds in the platforms and devices team.

Pichai pointed to long-term growth areas like Waymo, quantum computing, and YouTube, noting the video platform’s massive scale in India, where 15,000 channels have over 1 million subscribers.

When asked about warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that AI might displace many entry-level jobs, Pichai said, “I respect that… it’s important to voice those concerns.”

On whether artificial general intelligence (AGI) is inevitable, he was cautious but hopeful. “I’m very optimistic,” he said. “But are we currently on an absolute path to AGI? I don’t think anyone can say for sure.”