Block Slashes 40% of Workforce, Cites AI

The market immediately rewarded Block's decision, with its stock surging over 20% in after-hours trading following the announcement. This investor enthusiasm signals a belief that smaller, AI-augmented teams can maintain productivity while significantly cutting operational costs. The move was part of a broader restructuring, with CEO Jack Dorsey stating the goal was to make the company "smaller, faster and more focused" by deeply integrating artificial intelligence. This isn't Block's first round of recent layoffs; the company has been conducting rolling job cuts based on performance reviews for the past two years. However, this 40% reduction is one of the largest single-round percentage cuts in recent tech history. Dorsey acknowledged that the company over-hired during the pandemic, expanding from roughly 4,000 employees in 2019 to over 10,000 in 2025, but stated that this was corrected in mid-2024. The "agentic workflows" Block cited are AI-driven processes where autonomous systems can plan, execute, and adapt to multi-step tasks with minimal human input. This is a significant step beyond simple automation, aiming to create systems that can reason and make decisions. Internally, Block has been developing its own AI tools, including a coding assistant named "Goose," to increase productivity across engineering and customer service. The layoffs at Block are part of a larger trend of AI-related job cuts across the tech industry. In 2025, nearly 70,000 tech layoffs were directly linked to AI and automation. Companies like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft have also significantly reduced their workforces, often pointing to AI as a contributing factor for restructuring. This trend is creating anxiety among white-collar tech workers about future job security. For the Seattle tech scene, this adds to an already challenging environment. The region has seen a cascade of layoffs from major employers like Amazon and Microsoft, leading to a local unemployment rate that has climbed faster than the national average. The market is now flooded with highly skilled tech workers, while job postings remain below pre-pandemic levels. Affected Block employees are receiving a severance package that includes 20 weeks of salary, an additional week for each year of tenure, vested equity through May, and six months of health coverage. In a video call titled "gratitude," Dorsey addressed the laid-off staff, explaining the decision was a hard but necessary action to avoid prolonged uncertainty. Some analysts are skeptical, suggesting AI is a convenient justification for correcting pandemic-era over-hiring and boosting the stock price. They question whether current AI tools can genuinely deliver the massive productivity gains needed to justify such a drastic cut without disrupting core services like Square and Cash App. The move, however, may embolden other companies to make similar deep cuts, using AI as the rationale.