Block, the financial technology company that owns Square, Cash App and Tidal, said on Thursday that it was cutting 40 percent of its work force as it embraced new artificial intelligence tools.
About 4,000 employees are expected to lose their jobs, Jack Dorsey, the company’s top executive, said in a social media post.
The cuts, made as Block reported strong financial results for its most recent quarter, are perhaps the most striking example so far of a technology company’s making plans to eliminate employees because of A.I.
Mr. Dorsey wrote in his post that he wanted to act decisively rather than “cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out.”
“Something has changed,” he wrote. “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. and that’s accelerating rapidly.”
While Mr. Dorsey’s post is likely to make rank-and-file tech workers at other companies nervous about their future, investors embraced it. Block’s share price jumped more than 26 percent in after-hours trading.
Whether computer programmers — and white-collar workers in general — will be replaced by A.I. is an increasingly urgent question being asked in Silicon Valley and by politicians such as Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.
So far, many programmers see A.I. as more of a tool than a replacement. But executives believe that A.I. will continue to rapidly improve, particularly as A.I. code generators automate a wide range of tasks.
Mr. Dorsey appears to be betting that improvement is inevitable, and said he wanted to make a big change now rather than slowly whittle away at his work force.
“Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Mr. Dorsey wrote. “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.”
Mr. Dorsey said he did not believe that Block was the first company to realize that the rapid developments of A.I. would change businesses — nor that it would be the last.
“I think most companies are late,” he wrote. “Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes. I’d rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively.”
Block has grown significantly over the past few years. It had 10,205 full-time employees globally at the end of 2025, according to financial filings. It reported 5,477 at the end of 2020. The company expects the layoffs to cost $450 million to $500 million.
Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for Block shared a link to Mr. Dorsey’s post and his letter to shareholders.
Natallie Rocha is a San Francisco-based technology reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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