{"id":516487,"date":"2026-03-03T18:19:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/516487\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T18:19:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:19:15","slug":"tech-billionaire-jack-dorsey-cuts-half-of-his-afterpay-workforce-in-australia-as-ai-takes-over-just-days-after-splurging-on-lavish-company-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/516487\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech billionaire Jack Dorsey cuts half of his Afterpay workforce in Australia as AI takes over – just days after splurging on lavish company trip"},"content":{"rendered":"

The parent company of ‘buy-now-pay-later’ giant Afterpay has sacked half of its Australian staff just two days after taking them on a boujee company retreat, which one worker had just lauded as showing ‘the culture was better than ever’.<\/p>\n

Around 200 staff had just returned from a trip in Lorne, located on Victoria’s spectacular Great Ocean Road, on Friday when they learned of the news via Block chief executive\u00a0Jack Dorsey<\/a>‘s 628-word statement on X.<\/p>\n

Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter<\/a> and has become one of the tech industry’s highest-profile billionaires, said he had decided to cut his 10,000 staff by 40 per cent due to artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

‘Gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed,’ he posted on X.<\/p>\n

‘We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working.’<\/p>\n

Almost half of the Australian workforce has been culled, including entire teams within its communications, legal, design, marketing, product and engineering departments, the Australian Financial Review<\/a>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n

The marketing team had already experienced a 60 per cent mass redundancy in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only Australian department not impacted directly by the cuts is the sales team.<\/p>\n

\"Almost <\/p>\n

Almost half of Afterpay’s Australian workforce learned they’d been axed on Friday<\/p>\n

\"Chief <\/p>\n

Chief executive of parent company ‘Block’, Jack Dorsey, announced the news via X on Friday<\/p>\n

Block’s severance packages for Australian workers include 20 weeks’ pay plus one additional week per year served, all equity vested until the end of May, and six months of healthcare.<\/p>\n

They will also receive around $7,030 cash and be allowed to keep their company laptop.<\/p>\n

Those who remain at the company have been promised a 5.68 per cent pay increase and around $30,000 in cash and shares.<\/p>\n

Block, which paid over $39 billion to acquire Afterpay in 2022, declined to confirm how many people had been axed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The shock redundancy round comes just two months after Block spent nearly $96million flying 1,300 Afterpay Australia staff, and the rest of its global workforce, to California for a lavish company retreat at the\u00a0Oakland Arena & Coliseum.<\/p>\n

The three-day festivities included performances from DJs and rappers like T-Pain and Anderson Paak, free-flowing alcohol, and a fireside chat with Jay-Z.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An Afterpay employee who was let go in the latest mass redundancy round said it ‘feels scary right now’, but incredibly, he still supports Dorsey’s vision.<\/p>\n

‘If you’re finishing this journey with Block\/Afterpay soon, it’s the unknown for a bit. But a year from now you’ll be somewhere new, and grateful that life handed you a new set of cards,’ he said in a post seen by the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The company had just splashed out nearly $96 million on a Californian retreat for 8,000 staff<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The festivities also included a chat with rapper and Block director Jay Z\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘If you’re staying, enjoy the ride. It’s an awesome company with so much to offer the world. I wholeheartedly believe in Jack’s vision for creating more economic empowerment for people who might otherwise get left behind.’<\/p>\n

Block recently increased its profit\u00a0before tax by 17 per cent to more than $14 billion.<\/p>\n

It comes as several companies announced cuts to its Australian workforces last week ahead of artificial intelligence productivity gains.<\/p>\n

WiseTech CEO Zubin Appoo revealed on Wednesday an ‘AI transformation program’ would result in about 2,000 jobs getting the axe this year.<\/p>\n

Mr Appoo said it would be a ‘phased headcount reduction, initially in product and development and customer service, by up to 50 per cent’.<\/p>\n

He claimed the AI program would make the company more efficient.<\/p>\n

Commonwealth Bank also confirmed their plan to lay off 300 Australians, despite recording a $5 billion profit just weeks ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parent company of ‘buy-now-pay-later’ giant Afterpay has sacked half of its Australian staff just two days after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,100,254355,44,105,13323],"class_list":{"0":"post-516487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-dailymail","14":"tag-jack-dorsey","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-twitter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}