Author：TechFlow
Author: Curry, Deep Tide TechFlow
Last night after the US stock market closed, the stock price of a company called Block surged by 25%.
It wasn't because they launched a new product, or because they secured a major client. It was because the CEO announced that nearly half of the staff would be laid off.
The number of people was reduced from over 10,000 to less than 6,000. More than 4,000 people left.
As soon as the news broke, investors voted with their own money. The closing price was $54, but it jumped to $67 in after-hours trading. Overnight, Block's market capitalization increased by nearly $3 billion.
They laid off 4,000 people, but gained a market value of $3 billion.
If we calculate it that way, each person laid off is worth $750,000.
Many people may not have heard of the name Block, but you've probably seen its products.
Square, the little white square card reader on American streets, is used by small businesses for receiving payments. Cash App, used by young Americans for transferring money, is somewhat like the American version of Alipay.
The company's revenue for the full year of 2025 was $24.2 billion, with a gross profit of over $10 billion. It is a Nasdaq-listed fintech giant.
Its CEO is Jack Dorsey. You may not have heard of him, but you definitely know what else he did—he was the co-founder of Twitter. He founded Twitter in 2006, served as CEO twice, and resigned in 2021.
A year later, his friend Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X.
Now, Dorsey's entire focus is on Block. He is also a Bitcoin zealot, with Bitcoin on Block's balance sheet and the company investing in Bitcoin mining and self-custody equipment.
When it comes to layoffs, most CEOs use the same rhetoric.
Strategic adjustments, organizational optimization, and a focus on core businesses. In layman's terms, you've been fired, but I don't want to put it too harshly.
Dorsey didn't do that.
In his letter to shareholders, he wrote directly: "Intelligence tools are changing the way a company is built and operated. A smaller team can do more and do it better with the tools we are building. And these tools are getting stronger every week."
In other words, AI can do your job now, and it's getting better and better at it.
He didn't even use the word "AI," which made it sound less jarring.
However, he added on X: He could have chosen to lay off employees gradually, in waves every few months, dragging it out for years. But he felt that repeated layoffs would destroy morale, so it was better to do it all at once.
"I would rather make a difficult but clear decision now than slowly reduce the number of people towards the same outcome."
This might be the first CEO in the AI boom to make no excuses for layoffs. He doesn't blame industry cycles, the macro environment, or strategic mistakes. He simply states: tools are more effective than people.
It's hard to say he's insincere. But this kind of sincerity is more unsettling than platitudes.
We also checked the changes in the number of employees at Block.
Public data shows that at the end of 2019, Block had a total of 3,835 employees. Then the pandemic hit, online payments exploded, Cash App users surged, and the company began hiring like crazy. By the end of 2025, the company had 10,205 employees.
In six years, it has nearly tripled.
Now cut it back to 6000.
In other words, the more than 6,000 people who were hired during the pandemic and worked for several years are now being categorized as "replaceable by intelligence tools".
Block is not an isolated case. During the years of the pandemic, almost all tech companies were scrambling for talent. Meta doubled its workforce in two years, then laid off employees in three rounds starting in 2022. Amazon and Google have both experienced similar periods of expansion and contraction.
But this time, Block is different. While other companies at least find some other reasons for layoffs, Dorsey directly pinpointed the cause to AI.
His open letter also contained the following sentence:
I don't think we did it too early; I think most companies did it too late.Within a year, most companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar adjustments.
Moreover, his actions remind one of someone.
In October 2022, Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and laid off about 3,700 people in the first week, almost half of the employees.
At the time, the entire Silicon Valley thought he was crazy. Advertisers left, the system crashed frequently, and public opinion was overwhelmingly against him. Twitter's valuation shrank from $44 billion to less than $20 billion under his leadership.
Dorsey witnessed everything. He's not only a co-founder of Twitter, but he also publicly supported Musk's acquisition. The two have a good relationship.
Three years later, Dorsey did almost the exact same thing at his own company.
Nearly half the staff were cut, all at once, without any delays. Even the management methods were copied.
Musk requires federal employees at DOGE to send him weekly emails reporting their five major achievements, while Dorsey requires Block employees to send him weekly emails listing their five work results.
Then, he used AI to summarize these emails.
The difference lies in the outcome. When Musk spun out Twitter, the market saw him as disruptive. When Dorsey spun out Blockchain, the market saw him as a leader in the future. The same move resulted in one losing over $20 billion in valuation, while the other gained $3 billion in market capitalization.
What's the difference?
Dorsey did two things extra. First, he produced a very impressive financial report: Q4 gross margin increased by 24%, Cash App gross margin rose by 33%, and 2026 earnings guidance exceeded analysts' expectations. Second, he found the most effective narrative for the layoffs in this era:
It's not layoffs, it's AI transformation.
Actually, Block had been in chaos for several weeks before that blow came last night.
In early February of this year, the company conducted a round of layoffs, cutting approximately 10% of its workforce, roughly 1,100 positions. At the same time, Dorsey issued an order:All employees must use AI tools in their daily work.
According to Wired, some employees expressed dissatisfaction internally: "If this tool were really that good, we would have been using it ourselves long ago."
Then there's the weekly email system. Everyone sends Dorsey an email each week listing their five most recent achievements. Dorsey uses AI to summarize these emails.
Consider this process: you are required to prove your worth to the CEO every week, and the CEO doesn't even read what you write.
According to Wired, at an all-hands meeting, one employee said, "This is the lowest morale I've had in four years. The entire company culture is collapsing." Others said they didn't know if they would have work next week and couldn't make any life plans.
Dorsey's response at the meeting was: Some of you have been slacking off.
On one side, employees were saying they didn't know if they'd even be around tomorrow; on the other side, the CEO was saying some of them had been slacking off. This conversation took place in the same meeting room.
Block is not the first, nor will it be the last.
Shopify's CEO told employees this year that if they want to add staff, they should first prove that AI can't do the job. Klarna's CEO publicly celebrated AI replacing 700 customer service positions. An internal Amazon memo stated that the company needs "fewer layers" because AI is "the most transformative technology since the internet"...
But these companies still tried to cover it up, packaging AI layoffs as "efficiency improvements" and "organizational upgrades." Dorsey was the first to completely expose the truth: AI can do your job, and the capital market rewarded it with a 25% increase in its stock price.
That's the scariest part.
CEOs now know that publicly saying "I replaced half the people with AI" will not be punished, but rather rewarded.
Finally, after reading Dorsey's shareholder letter and his full article on X last night, I have one feeling: this person really didn't lie.
The company was performing well, and he didn't feign distress. The reason for the layoffs was AI; he didn't make up any other excuses. The severance package included 20 weeks' salary plus one week's salary for each year of service, plus 6 months of health insurance and a $5,000 severance pay, which was indeed more dignified than many companies.
He even arranged a live video broadcast to personally thank those who were laid off. He himself admitted that doing so might seem awkward.
We have reason to believe that he is sincere.
But sincerity doesn't change anything. 4,000 people will still wake up tomorrow without jobs, while Dorsey will wake up tomorrow to a company that's worth more.
There is a detail here that all working people should pay attention to.
The employees at Block who were laid off were required to use AI daily and write weekly emails to the CEO to prove their worth over the past few weeks. They did. And then they were probably laid off too.
In other words, being able to use AI won't guarantee your safety, nor will proving your value. When a company decides to do the same work with fewer people, your efforts will only hasten that conclusion.
Dorsey said most companies will do the same thing within a year.
I don't know if he's right or wrong, but one thing is certain:
When your boss starts seriously researching how many people AI can replace, you'd better also seriously consider whether your income comes solely from your salary.
