MW Coinbase will lay off 14% of its staff as AI spurs 'a new way of working'

By William Gavin

Coinbase will pivot to more 'one-person teams,' meaning that employees will be asked to act as engineers, designers and product managers all in one - with the help of AI

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on Tuesday that his company would cut several hundred employees.

The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global plans to lay off around 14% of its workforce and replace at least some of them with artificial intelligence.

In a letter to staff published on Tuesday, Coinbase (COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong said that "two forces are converging at the same time" and that the company needs to be more agile. While writing that Coinbase is "well-capitalized" and "well-positioned to weather any storm," he also warned that the company is grappling with volatility.

"We're currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster and more efficient for our next phase of growth," Armstrong said in the letter.

He also pointed to AI, saying that he's seen engineers use new tools to slash the time it takes to get some work done and that many workflows have been automated. Coinbase has reached an "inflection point" like "every company," he wrote. As such, the company is looking to rebuild itself around AI, rather than people.

"We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core," the Coinbase founder wrote.

Armstrong said that Coinbase will adopt a flatter organizational structure, give managers more responsibilities and concentrate around "AI-native talent" who can manage fleets of AI agents. As part of that, Coinbase will experiment with "one-person teams" that combine the roles of engineers, designers and product managers into a single position, assisted by AI.

"This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs," Armstrong said, later adding that "the Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission."

Coinbase will provide more details when it reports quarterly earnings on Thursday, Armstrong said. In a filing with regulators, the company said its layoffs would impact roughly 700 people and that it would take hit of between $50 million and $60 million as a result. That cost is expected to impact the current quarter.

Investors appeared to cheer on the move, sending Coinbase shares nearly 4% higher in premarket trades on Tuesday.

Coinbase is just the latest company to experiment with AI while dramatically cutting headcount.

Snap (SNAP) last month said it would cut 16% of its full-time staff, in part due to the potential for AI to reduce "repetitive " work. Block, which had overhired during the pandemic, also recently used AI to justify laying off thousands of workers. And an executive at Amazon (AMZN) last year invoked AI to help explain why the company was reducing its workforce.

"Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company," Block CEO Jack Dorsey said in a February letter to shareholders. "We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better."

See more: These 5 AI-proof jobs are hiring - here's how much they pay and how to get them

-William Gavin

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May 05, 2026 08:40 ET (12:40 GMT)

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