Meta, Coinbase and Block have each laid off at least 10 percent of their employees in recent months and partly blamed artificial intelligence. About 13,000 jobs were eliminated among the three companies.

But the cuts also came after big changes and growing questions about their businesses. Meta backed away from its big bet on the so-called metaverse, which cost the company about $80 billion. Coinbase’s chief executive, Brian Armstrong, said that its business remained volatile and that there was “a down market” for cryptocurrency. And Block’s top executive, Jack Dorsey, acknowledged that the company had grown too much during the pandemic, tripling its work force from 2019 to 2022.

Layoffs in the tech industry are accelerating, whatever the motivations of executives. So far this year, more than 150 technology companies have cut a total of at least 115,000 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the industry.

That drip-drip of layoffs has become a steady stream in recent weeks. Companies slashing their staffs have run the gamut from software providers like Atlassian and Autodesk, to social networking apps like Pinterest and LinkedIn, to financial technology companies like Intuit and PayPal.

But in more than a few cases, the recent layoffs have coincided with other business issues. Wall Street loves an A.I. story right now. That, analysts and economists say, has offered a smoke screen for companies looking to beef up profits or patch over old mistakes.

Cutting jobs to make way for A.I. is “a nice excuse, but some of these aren’t necessarily the best, most well-run companies,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at the investment bank Evercore. “They may have overhired, or they may be losing market share. There may be other issues.”

When Snap’s chief executive, Evan Spiegel, laid off 1,000 people in April, for example, he said the company needed to turn a profit, which it has done in only three quarters since going public in 2017. But he also said A.I. was improving efficiency at the company, with “small squads leveraging A.I. tools to drive meaningful progress across several important initiatives.”

Meta’s turn toward A.I. was timed with a big shift away from its giant metaverse project. During the pandemic, the company hired thousands of people to work on the effort, saying it would add 10,000 employees in the European Union. From 2019 to 2022, Meta doubled in size to about 87,000 employees.

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