PwC cut roughly 600 executive assistants and support staff in February 2026. McKinsey cut about 200 tech and support roles late last year.
Both firms pointed at AI. Not as the whole reason, but as a real one.
The Firms That Cut First
PwC's U.S. arm let the roughly 600 employees go with four to six weeks of severance.
McKinsey's cuts affected about 200 people. That was less than half a percent of its 40,000-person workforce.
McKinsey's spokesperson said: "more efficient and effective, including by taking advantage of AI."
Global managing partner Bob Sternfels said non-client roles will see more cuts. He expects that over the next two years.
KPMG and EY are offshoring similar roles as part of their own cost programs. This isn't one firm's experiment. It's a sector move.
What the EA Actually Filtered
A good executive assistant was never just a scheduler. They read a meeting request and decided if it mattered.
They drafted the follow-up email in your voice. They caught the detail you missed because you were in three other calls that day.
An AI notetaker or executive assistant agent can transcribe the meeting and draft the follow-up. It cannot yet decide whether the follow-up should exist at all.
That judgment call didn't go away. It landed back on the executive.
Where Delegation Moved
Delegating to a person and delegating to a tool are not the same act. A person absorbs ambiguity. A tool needs it removed first.
That's a delegation depth problem, the same one middle managers hit under return-to-office mandates. Except here it's the executive holding the ambiguity, not passing it down.
| Task | EA-mediated model | AI-operated model |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting notes | EA sat in, wrote a structured summary, flagged what mattered | Notetaker transcribes everything; executive skims for what matters |
| Follow-up email | EA drafted it in your voice, sent after a quick check | Tool drafts it generically; executive edits tone and sends it themselves |
| Calendar triage | EA decided which requests reached you at all | Agent proposes times; executive still makes the accept/decline call |
| Sensitive conversations | EA knew which meetings to keep off the notetaker entirely | Executive has to remember to turn the recorder off, every time |
Synthesized from reporting on PwC and McKinsey support-staff cuts (Briefs, 2026). Also drawn from AI executive assistant capability descriptions (Metaintro, 2026; Lindy, 2026).
75% of Meetings Now Have a Bot in Them
Adoption isn't a pilot program anymore. Laxis's 2026 benchmark puts AI notetaker use at 75% of professionals. That's roughly double where it stood in 2023.
Sixty-seven percent of Fortune 500 companies have one deployed somewhere in the organization. Fireflies alone claims 75% Fortune 500 adoption on its own homepage.
Otter relaunched in April 2026 as a "Conversational Knowledge Engine."
It searches across meetings and connected tools.
Fireflies added a Perplexity-powered assistant that answers questions inside the call itself. These aren't note-taking add-ons anymore. They're built to sit where an EA used to sit.
The Trust Problem Nobody Delegated Away
An EA who mishears a client on a call quietly asks for clarification. A notetaker that mishears a client puts the error straight into a written record.
Workers cite inaccuracy and loss of nuance as their top concern with AI notetakers. Privacy and data-security risk rank close behind.
Lawsuits over recorded meetings are already surfacing. That's legal exposure an experienced EA used to head off. They knew which room to keep the recorder out of.
That's an executive accountability problem, and nobody catches the mistake before it reaches you.
Watch which meetings you let the notetaker into by default, not by decision. An EA used to make that call for you every day. Now it only gets made if you make it.
What Executive Presence Requires Now
Executive presence used to include having staff who managed access to your time. That signal is fading.
The new signal is closer to fluency. Can you configure the tool, catch its errors, and sound like yourself in its drafts?
Admin professionals who reposition around judgment and AI oversight are landing chief-of-staff and operations roles. Those roles are actually growing in 2026. The ones who don't reposition are the 600 and 200 above.
If You're Deciding Whether to Cut Support Staff
The math looks clean on a spreadsheet. A notetaker costs a fraction of a salary and never calls in sick.
The math misses what the EA's judgment actually insured against. Misread tone. A recorder left running.
A follow-up nobody should have sent.
Nearly a third of companies are already using AI to cut headcount. Most still plan to keep hiring elsewhere in 2026.
That tells you this isn't caution. It's speed outrunning the judgment layer.
Before you cut the person, ask who inherits their judgment calls. If the answer is "the AI," you've just delegated risk, not eliminated it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are AI notetakers actually replacing executive assistants?
Partly. PwC cut about 600 executive assistants and support staff in February 2026. McKinsey cut roughly 200 tech and support roles late in 2025.
Both firms credit AI with making support functions more efficient. Judgment resists automation. But calendar, notes, and follow-up work is going fast.
How many companies use AI meeting notetakers in 2026?
Seventy-five percent of professionals now use an AI notetaker in work meetings. That's roughly double 2023 adoption.
67% of Fortune 500 companies have deployed one somewhere in the organization. That's per Laxis's 2026 benchmark report.
What does delegation mean now that AI handles meeting notes and scheduling?
It means the executive configures and supervises the tool directly. They no longer hand the task to a person who filters it first.
An EA used to decide what's urgent, what gets rescheduled, what needs a human touch. That judgment call now sits with the executive, or gets skipped entirely.
Do executives still trust AI notetakers with sensitive meetings?
Not fully. Workers cite inaccuracy, loss of nuance, misread tone, and privacy risk as top concerns. Lawsuits over recorded meetings are already surfacing.
An EA used to absorb that judgment call. Now the executive has to make it in real time.
The notetaker took the notes. It didn't take the judgment.
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