Block announced Thursday it would cut nearly half its workforce as the payments company works to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its operations.
Layoffs will affect more than 4,000 company and CEO jobs Jack Dorsey said it made a single round of large reductions rather than a series of smaller headcount reductions to give the company more room to grow as it adapts to the AI era.
Dorsey explained his decision in a series of posts on
He said in his memo that the job cuts are “one of the most difficult decisions in our company’s history: We are reducing our organization by almost half, from more than 10,000 people to just under 6,000. That means more than 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or go into consulting.”
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Jack Dorsey said the layoffs would give Block a better path to growth. (Marco Bello/AFP via Getty Images)
Block will offer workers concerned 20 weeks of salary plus one week per year of seniority, stock vesting through the end of May, six months of health care, company devices and $5,000 to put toward whatever they need to ease their transition, Dorsey said.
Dorsey said that “the intelligence tools we create and use, coupled with smaller, flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working that fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a business…and it’s accelerating rapidly.”
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Teleprinter Security Last Change Change % XYZ BLOCK INC. 62.43 +7.83 +14.34% He went on to say that Block will be built with “intelligence at the heart of everything we do. How we work, how we create, how we serve our customers.”
Dorsey added in a follow-up article that the company “overhired during Covid because I poorly built 2 separate business structures (Square & Cash app) instead of 1, which we corrected in mid-2024. but that doesn’t take into account all the complexity we’ve taken care of through lending, banking and BNPL.
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Dorsey said he made a mistake in how he had different structures for Square and Cash App within Block. (Matt Crossick/PA Images via Getty Images)
Shares jumped after news that nearly half of the company’s workforce was being laid off as part of the company’s restructuring. AI Realignmentup 17% during Friday morning trading.
The company’s shares are up 22% in the past week, although they are down more than 2% year to date.
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