Block to cut more than 4,000 jobs amid AI disruption of the workplace

Fintech institution Block said Thursday that it’s cutting much than 4,000 workers oregon astir fractional of its workforce arsenic artificial quality disrupts the mode radical work.

The Oakland genitor institution of outgo services Square and Cash App saw its banal surge by much than 23% successful after-hours trading aft making the layoff announcement.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and caput of Block, said successful a station connected societal media tract X that the institution isn’t marque the determination due to the fact that the institution is successful fiscal trouble.

“We’re already seeing that the quality tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a caller mode of moving which fundamentally changes what it means to physique and tally a company,” helium said.

Block is the latest tech institution to denote monolithic cuts arsenic employers propulsion workers to usage much AI tools to bash much with less people. Amazon successful January said it was laying disconnected 16,000 radical arsenic portion of effort to region layers wrong the company.

Block has laid disconnected workers successful erstwhile years. In 2025, Block said it planned to slash 931 jobs, oregon 8% of its workforce, citing show and strategical issues but Dorsey said astatine the clip that the institution wasn’t trying to regenerate workers with AI.

As tech companies clasp AI tools that tin code, make substance and bash different tasks, idiosyncratic anxiousness astir whether their jobs volition beryllium automated person heightened.

In his enactment to employees Dorsey said that helium was weighing whether to marque cuts gradually passim months oregon years but chose to enactment immediately.

“Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the spot that customers and shareholders spot successful our quality to lead,” helium told workers. “I’d alternatively instrumentality a hard, wide enactment present and physique from a presumption we judge successful than negociate a dilatory simplification of radical toward the aforesaid outcome.”

Dorsey is besides the co-founder of Twitter, which was aboriginal renamed to X aft billionaire Elon Musk purchased the institution successful 2022.

As of December, Block had 10,205 full-time employees globally, according to the company’s yearly report. The institution said it plans to trim its workforce by the extremity of the 2nd 4th of fiscal twelvemonth 2026.

The company’s gross nett successful 2025 reached much than $10 billion, up 17% compared to the erstwhile year.

Dorsey said helium plans to code employees successful a unrecorded video league and noted that their emails and Slack volition stay unfastened until Thursday evening truthful they tin accidental goodbye to colleagues.

“I cognize doing it this mode mightiness consciousness awkward,” helium said. “I’d alternatively it consciousness awkward and quality than businesslike and cold.”