Crypto.com laid off 12% of its staff following the implementation of enterprise-wide artificial intelligence, CEO and co-founder Kris Marszalek said Thursday.
He did not specify how many employees were affected, but Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times reported that 180 employees were cut worldwide.
Many of the layoffs occurred within the growth and customer relationship management departments, according to The Straits Times.
“Companies that do not make this pivot immediately” toward AI “will fail,” Marszalek wrote on social media site X. “Companies that move slowly will be left behind. Companies that move immediately and pair the best AI tools with top-performers will achieve a level of scale and precision that was previously impossible.
“This is where we must go,” he wrote.
Marszalek wrote that all affected employees were notified and are “receiving resources to support their transition.” One unnamed Singapore-based employee told The Straits Times that she found out about her own layoff when she was locked out of the company’s Slack communication platform in the morning.
“This new foundation sets us up for continued success,” Marszalek wrote.
The cuts come three weeks after payments firm Block said it would cut 4,000 workers, or 40% of its workforce, as it leans into AI efficiencies.
“The core thesis is simple,” CEO Jack Dorsey wrote in a letter to shareholders. “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.”
The financial sector’s gung-ho approach to AI has spurred much conversation about both the technology’s possibilities and its impact on headcount. In December, Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf called the long-term impact of AI on the bank’s headcount “extremely significant.”
“It doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen next year, and it doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen in every area of the company,” he said at the annual Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference. “[AI is] not going to totally replace humans, but it does create an opportunity to do things significantly different.”
Marszalek, for his part, personally made a record-breaking investment in AI last year with his $70 million purchase of the domain name AI.com. This was the biggest-ever domain name deal, according to the Financial Times, which reported the deal last month.
