Jack Dorsey's Block just dropped the hammer on 60% of its workforce. The payments company confirmed it's cutting 6,000 of its 10,000 employees as it races to restructure around AI automation. According to CNBC's Steve Sedgwick, this is the biggest story of a chaotic week in tech - and for good reason. It's the most dramatic single-company layoff percentage we've seen from a major fintech player, signaling that AI's impact on financial services infrastructure is no longer theoretical.
Block isn't tiptoeing into AI transformation - it's cannonballing. The company behind Square and Cash App confirmed it will eliminate 6,000 positions, slashing its workforce from 10,000 to just 4,000 employees. That's a 60% reduction, making it one of the most aggressive restructurings in fintech history.
The announcement comes as CNBC analyst Steve Sedgwick called it "the biggest story of a tumultuous week" - and the numbers back him up. While Meta, Google, and Amazon have all announced layoffs in recent months, none have approached this percentage of their total workforce in a single cut.
Co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, who previously led Twitter through its own transformation, is betting that AI can handle functions currently performed by thousands of employees across customer service, fraud detection, transaction processing, and compliance operations. It's a massive gamble that Block's technology infrastructure has matured enough to operate with less than half its previous headcount.
The timing reveals how quickly AI adoption is accelerating in financial services. Just six months ago, Block was still hiring aggressively for engineering and operations roles. Now it's essentially rebuilding the company around automation. Industry sources suggest the cuts will hit hardest in customer support, operations, and middle management - precisely the areas where large language models and AI agents are showing the most immediate value.
