Jack Dorsey cuts 4,000 jobs at Block in AI pivot despite $6.25B revenue; 20-week severance for affected staff. Photos: X.
Jack Dorsey has announced a sweeping restructuring at his fintech company Block Inc., eliminating more than 4,000 jobs, nearly half of its workforce, in what he described as a necessary shift toward “intelligence tools.”
The move will reduce Block’s headcount from 10,205 employees to just under 6,000. The company owns payments platform Square, peer-to-peer service Cash App and buy-now-pay-later firm Afterpay.
In a letter to shareholders, Jack Dorsey said the cuts were part of a deliberate structural shift rather than a reaction to financial distress. He also warned that similar moves could ripple across industries within the next year as technological advances accelerate change.
“I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes,” he wrote. “I’d rather get there honestly and on our own terms than be forced into it reactively.”
In a post on X, the platform he previously led as Twitter, Dorsey described the decision as one of the toughest in the company’s history.
“Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” he said.
He added, “I’ve made one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company.”
Jack Dorsey emphasized that the layoffs were not driven by financial weakness.
“Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. But something has changed,” he said.
He pointed to the rapid development of intelligence tools within the company as a turning point.
“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,” Dorsey wrote.
The company opted for a single large round of layoffs rather than multiple smaller ones over time.
“Repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead,” Dorsey said. “I’d rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome.”
The layoffs were announced alongside Block’s earnings report. The company posted $6.25 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, with profit rising 24% year-over-year to $2.87 billion.
Block also disclosed that it expects to spend between $450 million and $500 million on severance costs related to the restructuring.
The 4,000 employees affected by the layoffs will receive:
20 weeks of salary, plus one additional week for each year of service
Equity vested through the end of May
Six months of health coverage
Their corporate devices
A $5,000 transition payment
Employees outside the United States will receive comparable support in accordance with local laws, the company said.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
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