New York
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Block, the company behind Square, Cash App and Afterpay, is cutting its staff by 40%. The reason: \u201cintelligence tools,\u201d according to a letter to shareholders by co-founder Jack Dorsey.\n <\/p>\n
\n Dorsey thinks most companies will follow suit in the near future.\n <\/p>\n
\n The company is laying off more than 4,000 people, reducing the workforce to just under 6,000.\n <\/p>\n
\n The cuts come as AI has reshaped jobs across the tech sector and is raising concerns about the future of the job market. Companies like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Verizon have all made sweeping cuts in the last year tangentially related to AI.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cA significantly smaller team, using the tools we\u2019re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week,\u201d Dorsey wrote.\n <\/p>\n
\n Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said it more plainly in the tech company\u2019s financial guidance: \u201cWe see an opportunity to move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In a post<\/a> on X, Dorsey guaranteed that the cuts weren\u2019t happening because the business is struggling, but rather because \u201cour business is strong\u2026 gross profit continues to grow.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The co-founder of Twitter believes he\u2019s ahead of the game.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes. I\u2019d rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively,\u201d he wrote.\n <\/p>\n \n On X, he said he chose to be honest about the company\u2019s position and act now, rather than \u201ccut gradually over months or years.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Dorsey said affected employees will have severance for 20 weeks or more depending on tenure, equity vested until the end of May and six months of health care as well as any corporate devices and an extra $5,000.\n <\/p>\n \n Investors have reacted well to the gutting of jobs. Block\u2019s shares soared up to 24% after the announcement.\n <\/p>\n \n The cuts come amid rising concerns about how AI will impact the workforce as AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI continue to push out new enterprise tools. Just this week, Anthropic updated its popular Claude model to perform better at office jobs in human resource, design and wealth management. Software stocks cratered earlier this month after Anthropic launched updates to its Claude Cowork tool.\n <\/p>\n \n Dorsey\u2019s decision also reflects a growing sentiment among tech leaders to operate more leanly as AI evolves. Amazon said it needed \u201cfewer layers\u201d to \u201coperate as quickly as possible,\u201d calling AI is the \u201cmost transformative technology we\u2019ve seen since the internet\u201d in a memo from October<\/a> announcing layoffs.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Block, the company behind Square, Cash App and Afterpay, is cutting its staff by 40%.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-501822","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-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}