Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is letting go of roughly 700 employees, citing the way artificial intelligence (AI) is “fundamentally changing” how the company operates.
The cuts amount to about 14 percent of Coinbase’s workforce, CEO Brian Armstrong announced on May 5, saying AI has brought the company to “an inflection point.”
“The biggest risk now is not taking action,” he wrote. “We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core.”
Armstrong also pointed to market volatility as a factor behind the cuts. He said crypto is in a down market and that Coinbase needs to adjust its cost structure now for its “next phase of growth.”
The company is not retreating from crypto, however. Armstrong reaffirmed his optimistic view of the sector, pointing to stablecoins, tokenization, and prediction markets as drivers of the “next wave of adoption,” as digital assets and blockchain technology become more accepted into mainstream business and finance.
Coinbase now joins a growing list of tech firms that have cut jobs while shifting more work toward AI, following layoffs, for example, at Block, Crypto.com, and Bolt Financial so far into this year.
Block, the company behind Square, Cash App, and Afterpay, announced in February that it would reduce its workforce by nearly half, citing an “opportunity to move faster with smaller, highly talented teams using AI to automate more work.” In a letter to shareholders, Block co-founder Jack Dorsey said the company was separating more than 4,000 employees, reducing its headcount to just under 6,000.
“Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural change,” Dorsey wrote in the letter, adding that he did not view himself as a pioneer in making such a decision, but rather as a bit late.
More recently, Bolt slashed roughly 30 percent of its workforce in April, or about 40 people, as the financial tech company also pivots toward AI. The move marked Bolt’s fourth round of cuts since 2022.