Recently, Block announced a cut of more than 4,000 employees, and interestingly, revenue increased by approximately $220 million compared to the previous quarter. The reason? According to Jack Dorsey, the company's CEO, AI has fundamentally changed how a modern organization is built and operated.

Dorsey is quite confident in a letter to shareholders that within the next year, most companies will reach similar conclusions and implement similar structural changes. Following this announcement, Block's stock rose about 24% on the New York Stock Exchange, indicating market support for this decision.

It can be seen that Block is one of the companies strongly integrating Bitcoin into its business operations. They not only incorporate Bitcoin payments into Square and Cash App but also operate Bitkey — a hardware wallet that stores Bitcoin independently — and even develop their own Bitcoin mining machines. Some speculate that Dorsey is Satoshi Nakamoto, although he has denied this multiple times. With these activities, Block is building a complete Bitcoin ecosystem, from payment solutions to managing Satoshi wallet addresses and mining infrastructure.

Block's layoffs are not an isolated phenomenon. Amazon cut 16,000 employees in January to increase spending on AI. Pinterest laid off about 15% of its workforce to reallocate resources to AI products. Salesforce, Klarna, and Accenture are doing the same. Even Gustav Söderström, CEO of Spotify, said that the company's top developers will not write a single line of code in 2026, instead fully using AI to design software.

Dorsey admits that Block hired too many during the COVID period because he built the structure incorrectly, but this was corrected by mid-2024. Interestingly, he does not believe that Block is leading this awareness — in his view, most companies are lagging behind and will face similar decisions in the near future.

Overall, this round of layoffs reflects a larger trend in the tech industry: AI is not only a tool to increase productivity but also a reason to restructure the workforce. Companies like Block are leading the way in this, and many others are likely to follow in the coming months.