Jack Dorsey says Block is cutting nearly half of its workforce for the AI revolution
The Word on Wall Street panel discusses the market sell-off, tech stock turnover and Nvidia’s earnings drop after Mornings and Maria.
Block on Thursday announced that it will cut nearly half of its workforce as the payments company works to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) in all its activities.
The layoffs will affect more than 4,000 jobs at the company and the CEO Jack Dorsey indicated that he continued with one round of big cuts rather than a series of smaller layoffs to give the company more room to grow as it adapts to the AI era.
Dorsey explained this decision in a series of articles on X, which is the social network he previously led when it was known as Twitter, and said that he is not making the decision because Block is in trouble but because the small staff “gives us the space to grow our business properly, on our terms, instead of always reacting to the pressures of the market.
In his letter he said the job cuts were “one of the most difficult decisions in our company’s history: we are reducing our organization by almost half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000.”
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Jack Dorsey said the layoffs would give Block a better way to grow. (Marco Bello/AFP via Getty Images)
Block will provide affected employees 20 weeks of salary and one week per year of residency, equity awarded at the end of May, six months of health care, corporate resources and $5,000 to put towards anything they need to help them with their transition, Dorsey said.
Dorsey said “the intellectual tools we’re building and using, paired with small and agile teams, are enabling a new way of working that’s fundamentally changing what it means to build and run a company. And that’s fast.”
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| A ticker | Security | Finally | Change | change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XYZ | VIMBELA INC. | 62.42 | +7,82 |
+ 14.32% |
He went on to say that Block will be built with “intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers.”
Dorsey added in a follow-up post that the company “hired a lot during covid because I incorrectly built 2 separate corporate structures (square & cash app) than 1, which we fixed in mid-2024. but this misses all the complexities we have faced with lending, banking, and BNPL.”
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Dorsey said he made a mistake in the way he had separate entities for Square and Cash App within Block. (Photos by Matt Crossick/PA via Getty Images)
Block’s shares rose following the announcement that nearly half of the company’s workforce would be laid off amid the company’s stock price. AI overhaulrose 17% during morning trading on Friday.
The company’s stock is up 22% in the past week, though it’s down more than 2% year to date.
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