It was still unclear Wednesday evening how many Webflow workers were laid off from the remote company, which was valued at $4 billion in 2022. The company’s San Francisco headquarters are pictured above.
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San Francisco startup Webflow on Wednesday became the latest tech company to announce layoffs, abruptly notifying workers that their jobs were another casualty in an industry that is restructuring around artificial intelligence.
The announcement came as a shock to employees who said they were locked out of their company accounts without any warning. It was still unclear Wednesday evening how many people had been or were to be laid off from the remote company, which was valued at $4 billion in 2022.
Webflow launched in 2012 as a website builder and hosting platform. But in recent years, CEO Linda Tong wrote in a statement on the company’s website, AI-tools have transformed how websites are developed, prompting the “difficult decision to restructure Webflow’s team and operating model.”
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“We’re at an inflection point, both as a company and as an industry,” Tong wrote. “AI is rewriting the rules for how marketing teams create, test and optimize digital experiences. And the companies that move decisively through moments like this are the ones that come out ahead.”
In her statement, Tong wrote that “many of our Webflow teammates” would be laid-off. Reached Wednesday, Webflow spokesperson Paul Chalker declined to say how many employees that included. Webflow employs between 500 and 1,000 people, according to the company’s LinkedIn page.
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But one laid-off Webflow developer, who the Chronicle agreed not to name in accordance with its anonymous source policy, believes the cuts exceed Webflow’s last major round of layoffs in 2024, when 8% of employees lost their jobs.
“It was a bloodbath,” said the employee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the terms of his severance agreement.
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At around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, the former Webflow developer woke up to a barrage of text messages from co-workers asking if he knew “what was going on.” When he tried to sign into his Slack account, he realized he was locked out. About half an hour later, he received an email notifying him of his termination.
A former Webflow software engineer, who was granted anonymity for the same reason, learned she was laid off when she checked her phone at the gym and saw a notification that she was logged out of her work email.
“I tried to sign back in and my password didn’t work,” she said. “One of my coworkers sent a screenshot of a message our CEO had sent to Slack notifying the team of layoffs and saying that by now everyone should have received an email notifying them of their status. I checked my email and I didn’t have anything.”
The software engineer received the notification on her personal email account about 15 minutes later, she said.
Chalker, the Webflow spokesperson, said impacted employees received emails to their personal accounts with severance packages and options for support from the company. He acknowledged that “some employees” learned of the layoffs by losing access to Webflow accounts and devices.
“As part of our standard security process, access to company devices and systems was restricted a few minutes before notifications were sent to personal email addresses,” Chalker said in a statement. “That step was taken to protect customer data and company information, not to leave employees without information or support.”
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Both employees who spoke to the Chronicle said they received no notification that layoffs were a possibility, although they had been wary of the waves of cuts hitting other companies.
San Francisco and San Mateo counties lost 1,900 information sector jobs, which are primarily tech companies, between March and April. Google, Pinterest, Autodesk and Meta have all announced cuts this year, with many pointing to AI in their reasoning for the change.
“C-suite thinks that I’m being replaced by AI, but they don’t actually understand what AI is doing,” said the former Webflow developer. “They’re going to find out at some point that they haven’t actually replaced anything, all they’ve done is make a mess. You can’t replace people with AI because AI does not work that way.”