Jack Dorsey, the technology entrepreneur who co-founded Twitter, announced that his company Block is cutting nearly 50% of its workforce in a public statement. Block, which is the company behind Square, Cash App and Afterpay, will now focus on artificial intelligence.
Why did Jack Dorsey’s Block company cut nearly 50% of its employees?
On Thursday, Dorsey announced that Block is cutting over 4,000 employees, which represents nearly half of the company’s global workforce. Block is going from over 10,000 workers to fewer than 6,000.
“today we’re making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we’re reducing our organization by nearly half,” he wrote in a statement, adding that most employees will be asked to leave or enter into consultation.
Dorsey said that the decision was made in order to avoid gradual cuts over time.
“repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” he wrote. “i’d rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome.”
The company’s CEO shared the reason behind the change: a new focus on artificial intelligence tools. Dorsey noted that Block is generating profit and that its “business is strong.” Yet, he highlighted a change in the industry related to artificial intelligence, which he said requires smaller teams.
“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 which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that’s accelerating rapidly,” Dorsey wrote.
we’re making @blocks smaller today. here’s my note to the company.
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today we’re making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we’re reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are…
— jack (@jack) February 26, 2026
Block’s CFO Amrita Ahuja echoed the company’s new focus on AI and said, “We see an opportunity to move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work,” according to CNN.
Dorsey added that the entire company is moving “towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces.”
“we’re going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers,” he added.
Other tech companies have also started slashing their workforce to focus on AI
Block is not the only technology company to shift towards AI and concurrently cut a major part of its workforce. Last year, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Verizon made cuts related to AI, according to CNN.
In Block’s case, the announcement has led to a 24% uptick in shares. Yet, a report published by Forrester Research in January estimated that jobs will be less automated than expected, TechCrunch shared.
“Only 6% Of Jobs In The US Will Be Automated By 2030,” the study notes.
It also shared that the hype surrounding AI may lead to “costly pullbacks, damaged reputations, and weakened employee experiences.” The report predicted that over half of company layoffs related to AI will be reversed due to premature decisions to cut the workforce. It also found that many financially driven layoffs are being confused with AI-driven layoffs.
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