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After taking his company, Block Inc \u2014 formerly Square Inc \u2014 to a market cap of over $30 billion, billionaire entrepreneur Jack Dorsey has laid off nearly 40 percent of the fintech giant\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n
In a long, rambling post on X-formerly-Twitter \u2014 Dorsey\u2019s original baby<\/a>, infamously \u2014 the Block CEO admitted the company\u2019s executives were slashing thousands of jobs in order to embrace AI.<\/p>\n \u201cToday we\u2019re making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we\u2019re reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000,\u201d Dorsey wrote. \u201cThat means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation.\u201d<\/p>\n Crucially, Dorsey highlighted that the company is on sound financial ground. Instead, he says the issue is that it just doesn\u2019t need all those people anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not making this decision because we\u2019re in trouble. our business is strong,\u201d he asserted. \u201cGross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving.\u201d But, Dorsey continued, \u201csomething has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re already seeing that the intelligence tools we\u2019re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,\u201d he continued, \u201cand that\u2019s accelerating rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n The tech billionaire also has a warning for the rest of the country\u2019s workers, saying that any company not doing the same is \u201clate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWithin the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes,\u201d Dorsey wrote.<\/p>\n While tech giants like Amazon<\/a> and eBay<\/a> are indeed cutting jobs by the ton, it\u2019s highly unlikely AI is taking them. AI\u2019s 95 percent failure rate at driving revenue notwithstanding \u2014 an oft-cited finding<\/a> from 2025 that often appears more and more prescient<\/a> as time goes on \u2014 there\u2019s compelling evidence that big tech\u2019s layoff spree is driven by the past, not the future.<\/p>\n In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies around the US added thousands of staffers to their payroll, Block included. (As Cybernews observes<\/a>, Block\u2019s workforce exploded from 3,900 in 2019 to 12,500 in 2022.) Luckily for it, AI arrived just as companies needed to correct their pandemic hiring sprees \u2014 offering executives a convenient excuse<\/a> for mass layoffs.<\/p>\n Even Dorsey admits<\/a> \u201cyes we over-hired during [COVID],\u201d which he blames on organizational issues, or, as he puts it, \u201cbecause i incorrectly built [two] separate company structures (square & cash app) rather than [one].\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo you over-hired, overbuilt, and now you\u2019re celebrating efficiency while people lost jobs,\u201d one poster replied<\/a> under Dorsey\u2019s post. \u201cMust be nice to treat human beings like spreadsheet errors.\u201d<\/p>\n All in all, it\u2019s probably cold comfort for the thousands of workers who\u2019ll soon be out of the job. AI might not be replacing them, but it makes a trendy excuse for the likes of Dorsey.<\/p>\n