Block CEO Jack Dorsey has warned of the impact of AI on jobs, especially at other companies.
Dorsey outlined Block’s next phase as a “smaller, faster, intelligence-focused company” in his opening remarks on Thursday’s earnings call, after announcing he would cut about 40% of Block’s 11,000 employees.
“I don’t think we’re quick to realize this. I think most companies are late,” he said.
He said AI is dramatically accelerating the work inside the block.
“Significantly smaller teams using the tools we are building can also do more and better, and the capabilities of our intelligence tools are compounding faster every week,” Dorsey said.
Dorsey noted that the AI’s capabilities improved rapidly late last year, outpacing Block’s own internal tool Goose, which it uses to speed up coding and other repetitive tasks.
“Something happened last December that made the models an order of magnitude more capable and more intelligent,” he said.
Dorsey predicted more companies will follow suit and leverage AI to drive efficiency gains. Block said the company is staying ahead of trends that “ultimately all companies” will adopt.
The Bay Area technology company, which owns Square, Cash App and Tidal, had “a lot of overlap” that needed to be streamlined, Dorsey said.
Amrita Ahuja, Block CFO, said that at Block, engineering work that previously took weeks now takes a fraction of the time thanks to AI coding tools.
Output per engineer has increased by more than 40% since September, she added.
While Block is cutting more than 4,000 jobs from its 10,000 employees, Ahuja said it is expanding in one area: senior engineering talent with a focus on AI.
