Block Cuts Staff, Hunts for AI Talent
Jack Dorsey's Block is laying off a significant portion of its workforce, with insiders attributing the cuts to bloat and poor management rather than AI. Paradoxically, Dorsey says the company is still hiring for senior AI engineering roles, highlighting the fierce, targeted demand for AI specialists.
The recent layoffs at Block involved shedding over 4,000 jobs, reducing the company's workforce by nearly half, from over 10,000 to just under 6,000 employees. This move comes despite the company reporting strong financial health, with a 17% year-over-year increase in gross profit for 2025 and a stock surge of over 20% following the announcement. Jack Dorsey clarified the cuts were not due to financial distress but rather a strategic shift toward smaller, more agile teams utilizing artificial intelligence. He admitted to over-hiring during the pandemic and creating inefficient, separate structures for Square and Cash App, which the company has since been correcting. The goal now is to operate with a leaner structure, targeting over $2 million in gross profit per employee. This major workforce reduction is one of the most significant in the tech sector recently, where companies like Amazon and Meta have also been trimming their numbers. However, the scale of Block's single-round layoff, impacting nearly 40-50% of its staff, is particularly notable. Dorsey opted for one large cut to avoid the prolonged uncertainty and morale damage associated with gradual layoffs. Affected employees are receiving a substantial severance package, including 20 weeks of salary, an additional week for each year of service, vested equity, and six months of health coverage. While cutting a large portion of its workforce, Block is actively recruiting for senior AI engineering talent. Open roles, such as a Staff Machine Learning Engineer for its Support ML Modeling team, indicate a focus on building out AI-powered customer support and other intelligent systems. This team is central to developing innovations like chatbots and smart tools for agents across both Cash App and Square. Dorsey has been vocal about his belief that most companies will undergo similar AI-driven structural changes within the next year. He argues that intelligence tools are fundamentally altering how companies are built and operated, a sentiment that is reverberating across the tech industry. This move positions Block to rebuild with AI at the core of its operations, from internal workflows to customer-facing products.
