Verizon has cut more than 13,000 roles — the largest layoff in the company's history — as CEO Dan Schulman pushes a three-year transformation plan he says will leave the carrier "two or three generations better" than it is today.

Schulman, named CEO in October 2025 after serving as the board's designated "hit-by-a-bus" successor, laid out his playbook in an interview on the Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors podcast. One year in, Verizon is beginning to see results, he says, while it braces for Elon Musk's Starlink to enter direct competition.

What did Verizon admit first?

Schulman spent years watching the telecom giant lose market share from his seat on Verizon's board, and he does not soften the diagnosis.

"We were a big, lumbering giant that had fallen behind," Schulman said, admitting the board should have moved faster to change leadership. "We had processes where you needed something like 35 signatures before you could move forward."

Thirty-five signatures per decision. For practitioners, that number explains what Schulman is attacking first: not the product line, but the approval chain itself.

What did the first all-hands change?

At his first all-hands meeting, Schulman spoke without slides or notes. He told employees four things plainly: Verizon was losing, layoffs were necessary, the culture had to be redefined, and the company's tech stack needed a rebuild from top to bottom.

The cuts that followed — more than 13,000 roles — set the record for Verizon's largest-ever layoff. The rationale on the tech side is scale: Schulman estimates there will be 100 billion AI agents in the next few years, driving an explosion in data traffic and network demand. A carrier that needs 35 signatures to act cannot service that load.

"Culture is the single most important thing in any transformation. It is what holds you back or can propel you forward," Schulman said.

How is the plan structured?

Schulman expects the transformation to take three years. His operating model, as he described it:

• AI deployed to boost performance marketing and raise customer satisfaction
• Preparation for AI-driven cybersecurity threats
• Clear KPIs set across 10 workstreams

Ten workstreams with explicit KPIs marks a shift for a company previously governed by committee. Ruth Umoh's profile of the turnaround strategy, with further detail, appears in the next print issue of Fortune.

How is Verizon answering Starlink?

Elon Musk's Starlink is the new challenge. Schulman says he has not spoken with Musk recently, but he is preparing as if Musk will follow through and become a direct Verizon competitor.

"We're not standing still. We're assuming that what he says is what he's going to do," Schulman said. "We need to be ready and prepared…We are going to have a radically different look and feel three or four years from now. We're going to be two or three generations better than we are today."

The signal for rivals and suppliers: Verizon is treating satellite broadband as an incoming threat, not a talking point, and is building network capacity against it now.

What else moved this morning?

• Anthropic targets an IPO valuation below earlier expectations.
• Markets were mostly up after CoreWeave beat revenue estimates.

The full Schulman interview is available on Spotify and YouTube via the Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors series. Verizon's board, by Schulman's own account, waited too long to act; the 13,000-role cut, the KPI grid and the Starlink posture are what moving faster looks like in practice.