> A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the efficiencies in AI

It's likely more:

A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the over hiring during Covid, cutting down on risky ventures, protecting margins, and narrowing scope.

But I think there's also:

A company wants to see if AI is making them more efficient, decides to cut people as if it was and see what happens.

I also am not sure about the short term stock price, many recent mass layoffs the stock often moved down. The CloudFlare stock is tanking in after market for example.