In a major layoff directly attributed to Artificial Intelligence, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block Inc, an American Fintech company, announced firing 4000 employees on Thursday, which is 40% of their total staff strength. Dorsey made the decision while claiming that the company is doing “business strong” and attributed the move to how AI has “fundamentally changed” how companies are run.
In a detailed post on X, Dorsey attributed the layoff to structural changes AI has introduced in Block, a US market leader in point-of-sales system that currently serves 57 million users and 4 million sellers.
“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 being asked to leave or entering into consultation,” said Dorsey in a post on X.
Dorsey informed that terminated employees will receive their salary of five months plus a week per year of their tenure, six months of healthcare, corporate devices and a $5000 amount for the transition phase.
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
Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, (now X) announced the layoff claiming that use of AI tools has “fundamentally changed” what it means to run a company. He claimed that he is not taking this decision due to financial constraints.
“We’re not making this decision because we’re in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. 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, added Dorsey.
Dorsey’s decision comes amid global market anxiety over layoffs as experts predict widescale deployment of AI in companies in 2026. As per Q4 2024 Earnings report of Block Inc, the company had total net revenue of $6.03 billion, marking a 4.5% year-over-year (YoY) increase with gross profit of $2.31 billion which is 14.1% increase in YoY. The Q4 2025 report of Block Inc. showed an even further increase in gross profit at $2.87 billion marking 24% rise in YoY growth.
Incidentally, a recent scenario analysis report by Citrini Research titled “The Global Intelligence Crisis 2028” made a similar argument that wide scale adoption and AI “bullishness” can be economically bearish and presents an economically dystopian world in near future, where AI agents are embedded in every sector with massive layoff and companies switching to better workflow automation by cutting the headcount and using the savings to “fund the very technology disrupting it.”
Also Read: ‘2028 Global Intelligence Crisis’ Report Ruffles Feathers in White House
