Block CEO Jack Dorsey issued a warning about the impact of AI on employment, particularly for other companies
After announcing he's cutting about 40% of Block's 11,000 employees, Dorsey outlined Block's next phase as a "smaller, faster, intelligence-native company" in his opening remarks during the company's earnings call on Thursday.
"I don't think we're early to this realization. I think most companies are late," he said.
AI, he said, is dramatically accelerating work inside Block.
"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 single week," Dorsey said.
Dorsey pointed to a sharp jump in AI capabilities late last year, surpassing Block's own internal tool, Goose, which it uses to speed up coding and other repetitive work.
"Something happened in December last year where the models just got an order of magnitude more capable and more intelligent," he said.
Dorsey predicted more companies will follow suit, using AI to drive efficiency gains. Block, he said, is moving ahead of a trend that "all companies will eventually" embrace.
The Bay Area tech company, which owns Square, Cash App, and Tidal, had "a lot of duplication" that needed to be streamlined, Dorsey said.
Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said that at Block, engineering work that would have taken weeks now takes a fraction of the time thanks to AI coding tools.
Output per engineer is up by more than 40% since September, she added.
Although Block is shedding over 4,000 people from its 10,000-strong workforce, it's expanding in one area — senior engineering talent focused on AI, Ahuja said.
