NEW YORK, UNITED STATES — Block recently announced it will reduce its staff by 40%. From 10,000, the company plans to retain only under 6,000, with over 4,000 people expected to be laid off or enter into consultation.
In the company’s Q4 2025 shareholder letter, Jack Dorsey, Block’s co-founder, writes that this decision isn’t because of financial or internal distress. Instead, it’s an operational strategy that he believes other companies will follow suit within the year. Dorsey also stated that he trusts Block’s intelligence tools will be more than enough to operate the company efficiently.
We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.
— Jack Dorsey, Block Co-Founder
This decision to cut staff and rely on AI tools isn’t just about internal ease and operational efficiency. Currently, Block serves millions of customers, and this number continues to grow.
With constant, unpredictable economic shifts, these customers rely on the company to manage their finances and navigate these changes. Block is expected to deliver its services at speed and accurately, and it believes that intelligence tools will better support its mission.
We are choosing to shift how we operate at a time when our business is accelerating, and we see an opportunity to move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work. These decisions are always difficult, and we don’t take them lightly, but rather than acting tentatively over the coming months and years, we’re acting decisively now to position Block for our next phase of long-term growth.
— Amrita Ahuja, Block COO and CFO
AI at the Core of Operations
Jack Dorsey outlines the expected changes to Block’s operations, emphasizing how artificial intelligence will be at its core. Block will base its decisions, shape how it builds trust, manages risks, and develops products on AI to better serve its customers.
The company is moving toward a model where customers build personalized features on top of Block’s current capabilities, dramatically changing its value proposition.
To kickstart this development, the company will shift its focus to:
- Customer capabilities
- Better tool interfaces
- Proactive AI based on real-time data and customer understanding
- An AI model that orchestrates its operations
We believe Block will be significantly more valuable as a smaller, faster, intelligence-native company. Everything we do from here is in service of that.
— Jack Dorsey, Block Co-Founder
