This CEO explains what’s really behind layoffs—and it’s not AI

Last week, Block CEO Jack Dorsey shared that his fintech company would be cutting 40% of its workforce, arguing that AI would allow them to do more with smaller teams. Many observers wondered if the large-scale layoffs reflected the new reality amid rapid AI adoption, and whether it was just a matter of time before other companies followed suit. 

But not everyone is buying it. In a post on X, Whoop CEO Will Ahmed shared that his company—which makes health and fitness wearables—would be nearly doubling its 800-employee headcount this year, drawing a contrast with employers that have been slashing jobs over the last year. He then weighed in on the growing trend of companies using AI to explain their layoffs. “Investing in talent and AI tools not mutually exclusive,” Ahmed wrote. “Many of these ‘AI layoffs’ are just companies underperforming or lacking a bigger market opportunity.” 

In an interview with Bloomberg, Ahmed elaborated on this idea. “There’s a lot of companies that are doing layoffs right now and blaming it on AI,” Ahmed said. “But they’re actually doing layoffs because the businesses aren’t performing particularly well. And it’s a convenient excuse.”

Amid waves of layoffs across corporate America, many leaders and CEOs have been reticent about their reasons for trimming headcount, often gesturing at AI investments when they announce layoffs. In 2025, AI was cited in nearly 55,000 layoffs, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas—and some leaders, like Dorsey, have been quite explicit about pinning job losses on AI. 

Economists, on the other hand, have pointed out that there are countless reasons driving layoffs, from immigration policy to tariffs and political uncertainty; sometimes it’s simply a matter of financial performance. 

As a former Block employee noted in the New York Times this week, a closer look at Block’s job losses—which reportedly included cuts to the policy team and DEI roles—indicates that the layoff strategy was likely driven more by traditional cost-cutting measures. Some experts have argued that, like many tech companies, Block overhired during the pandemic. (There’s also limited evidence that AI is causing a broad contraction in the workforce: Goldman Sachs economists recently estimated that the sectors most impacted by AI had seen 5,000 to 10,000 monthly net job losses last year.) Connecting layoffs to AI, however, offers a more palatable framing for shareholders. 

Ahmed is not the only CEO who has started talking about this more openly. Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made similar remarks when interviewed during an AI conference in India. “I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,” he said. “I expect we’ll see more of the latter over time.”

But for every CEO willing to admit that AI isn’t the sole factor driving layoffs, there are plenty of others who keep touting its potential—and if the 15% jump in Block’s share price is any measure, they seem incentivized to continue doing so.

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