AI stock Innodata crashes 25% on job cuts, lost contract

Innodata, a trendy AI stock that hit a $1 billion market cap in the past two years of AI euphoria, crashed by over 25% yesterday after it fired 550 employees.

The drastic cut spooked investors that the company might have lost its most important customer. Indeed, termination emails blamed the wind-down of a business assignment from a customer.

Investors sold down the market cap of INOD — common shares that trade on the Nasdaq despite the company’s substantial overseas presence — by $500 million within a single trading session.

By the close of trading yesterday, Innodata had erased all market cap gains its shareholders earned since November 11, 2024.

Year-to-date chart of Innodata. Source: TradingView

Innodata fired approximately 550 workers in India this week, and made additional layoffs in the Philippines. On Tuesday, shares in the data labeling supplier collapsed on seven times their average trading volume.

Yesterday was the stock’s worst performance since February 15, 2024 when a Wolfpack Research short-selling report preceded a single day crash of 30%.

The company is one of the AI industry’s small-cap winners. Indeed, as recently as 2020, it was a penny stock.

Today, the New Jersey-headquartered company labels data and safety tests for AI labs.

It last reported 10,107 employees as of December 31, 2025, and has reported a staggering 12 consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue growth.

Even after yesterday’s crash, the company was worth over $1.5 billion.

What started as an ordinary Monday for workers devolved into a purge. According to local reports, workers logged-in on October 26, layoff rumors spread by lunchtime, and office IDs were deactivated by the afternoon.

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Two customers supplied 70% of Innodata’s Q2 revenue

The company’s quarterly report disclosed that the project work is “primarily at-will,” and that customers can “reduce, delay or cancel projects” at any time.

No Form 8-K landed on the SEC’s filing system by the evening of the layoffs.

According to the company’s second quarterly earnings report, its largest customer supplied roughly 37% of revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2026. Its next-biggest customer supplied 34% for those three months.

With that level of concentration, the missing client name certainly mattered to investors yesterday.

Whoever the ramped-down customer is, speculators have already picked a suspect. Predictions on X centered on Meta, which Hunterbrook Media reported in September was likely Innodata’s largest customer.

The official answer could arrive at any time via a press release of 8-K filing. As another opportunity to publicly clarify, Innodata reports third quarter 2026 results on November 5.

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