Block cut nearly half its staff after 18 months of AI tooling (interview with CFO)
In a Fortune interview, Block's CFO says an 18-month AI build-out justified cutting about 4,000 jobs while raising 2026 guidance.
What was changed
In a March 2026 interview with Fortune, Block CFO and COO Amrita Ahuja explains why the parent of Square and Cash App announced it would cut 4,000 jobs, nearly half its workforce, while reporting Q4 gross profit of $2.9 billion, up 24% year on year. She says it came from a position of strength and was a two-year journey, not an overnight decision. Shares jumped almost 20% in the sessions after the Feb. 26 announcement.
Ahuja credits an internally built AI agent, codenamed goose, in production for about 18 months and since open-sourced. Since September, she says, developer productivity has risen 40% per engineer using AI tools, and a risk model that once took a quarter to build was finished in a fraction of that time. She says there was no top-down percentage target: leaders built plans from the ground up around platform resilience, compliance and risk capability, and the product roadmap.
Ahuja says gross profit per employee was about $500,000 in 2019 and stayed roughly flat as headcount grew from a few thousand to around 13,000, then rose to about $750,000 in 2024 and $1 million in 2025, and would reach about $2 million in 2026 if targets are met. Block raised its 2026 outlook to 18% gross profit growth and 54% profit growth. Dorsey said Block over-hired during COVID, partly by building separate structures for Square and Cash App, corrected in 2024.
Why it worked
Gross profit per employee stagnated while headcount grew, which management read as a structure problem rather than a market one.
AI agents and coding tools gave leaders confidence that smaller teams could carry meaningful bodies of work.
Leaders chose one bold restructuring over repeated smaller cuts, partly because of the effect on morale.
What can be applied
Cutting a profitable company's headcount by half only holds together if the productivity case is measured first, and the company says the plan was built bottom-up, not from a percentage target.
Aftermath
The interview is a few days after the announcement, so there is no outcome beyond the share price jump and raised guidance, which are the company's own expectations. Ahuja acknowledged the emotional toll and that remaining staff would carry more work in the near term, backed by reskilling and rewards.