More AI, Fewer Employees: Jack Dorsey Explains Block’s Pursuit of ‘Excellence’

Block co-founder Jack Dorsey has zero regrets about a recent decision to lay off 40 percent of his staff at the financial technology platform to clear the way for artificial intelligence tools that work cheaper, better, and faster.

“We’re not just reacting into something mediocre,” he said during an appearance on Sequoia Capital’s Long Strange Trip podcast. “We’re acting towards excellence.”

The $41 billion company’s self-titled “Block head and chairperson” recounted the steps he and other top executives took late last year after deciding it was time to empower AI agents like OpenAI’s Codex 5.3 and Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 to do work that was once the realm of humans.

“We just did this exercise of, ‘Okay, so what is the minimal number of people that we would need to keep the service up 100 percent?’” said Dorsey, whose earlier startups include Bluesky and Twitter, which was rebranded X after its acquisition by Elon Musk in 2022.

“Next, ‘What is the minimal number of people that we would need to be fully be in compliance with our regulators? Then, third, ‘What is the minimal set of folks that we need in order to grow to fulfill our commitments we’ve made to the Street, but also rebuild the company as an intelligence?’”

The three-week process that provided answers to those questions led to pink slips for more than 4,000 of Block’s estimated 10,000 employees.

The move to AI is about more than enhancing productivityDorsey said in a Block note he wrote with board member and Sequoia Capital managing partner Roelof Botha. “Block is showing what it looks like to fundamentally rethink organization design, ultimately harnessing AI to increase speed as a compounding competitive advantage.”