Coinbase to Lay Off 14% of its Workforce
Coinbase has announced plans to lay off 14% of its workforce – or around 700 employees – as it looks to prepare for further AI integration, says CEO Brian Armstrong.
In an email to staff, Brian said that AI had “dramatically” changed the pace of work within the company, leading to an “inflection point.”
“We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast and AI-native,” He wrote. “We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core.”
The news follows a significant increase in AI-led layoffs – with nearly half of the 80,000 tech sector layoffs reported in Q1 of 2026 being attributed to the technology.
Flattening structures
As part of these layoffs, Brian says the company is “fundamentally changing,” how it operates. To achieve this, he says Coinbase is flattening its organisational structure, so there are just five layers below him – with each leader potentially having 15 or more direct reports
This, he says, will help create teams that can move quickly, and ensure every leader is a “strong and active contributor.”
“Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams,” he argues.
But Coinbase isn’t the only company looking to reduce layers of bureaucracy.
Jack Dorsey, CEO of fintech firm Block – which announced it was laying off 40% of its workforce in February – revealed on an episode of the Long Strange Trip podcast that, in an ideal world, the company would have no layers at all.
Sharing that he is planning to reduce middle management layers from five down to two or three, Jack said “In the most ideal case, you know, there is no layer. Everyone in the company reports to me, and that would be all 6,000 of the company.
“And that feels somewhat ridiculous when you consider the old structure, but when you consider that the majority of our work is going through this intelligence layer, it’s a lot more manageable.”
Developing AI-native talent
Alongside these organisational changes, Brian says that Coinbase will be “concentrating around AI-native talent,” to manage fleets of AI agents.
Using AI, the company will be “experimenting with reduced pod sizes,” testing out one-person teams that can balance engineering, design and product management.
Brian has been stressing the importance of AI at Coinbase for some time, revealing on Stripe Co-founder John Collison’s podcast in September that employees had been fired for not using AI.
Sharing on the podcast that he was told it would take two quarters to reach 50% AI adoption within the company, Brian said he “went rogue,” and posted in the company’s slack channel that he wanted all employees to be onboarded with the technology by the end of the week.
Those who hadn’t used the technology by the end of the week were asked to attend a Saturday meeting.
“I jumped on this call on Saturday and there were a couple people that had not done it,” Brian said. “Some of them had a good reason because they were just getting back from some trip or something, and some of them didn’t, and they got fired.”
While Brian said that some people “didn’t like,” the approach, he said he believes it “set some clarity,” in how the company needed to lean into AI.
