Crypto giant Coinbase fires 700 people in brutal email as company company looks to AI

A crypto currency boss this week informed employees in an early morning email that around 700 jobs will be cut as the company restructures around artificial intelligence. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong shortly before 7am on Tuesday, May 5, shared a memo on social media telling staff the cuts were necessary as AI reshapes the industry . About 14 percent of the company's workforce will be made redundant. "This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase : Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future." Armstrong said the affect employees would receive additional details within the hour. Some workers later said their access to company systems had already been limited by the time the email landed. “I know this feels sudden and harsh,” Armstrong wrote. He described the lay-offs as a difficult but necessary move linked to safeguarding customer data. He said that Coinbase remained financially strong and positioned for future growth, but said market pressures required the company to “rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native.” Engineers using AI tools are now able to complete projects in days that previously took teams weeks to finish, Armstrong said, and non-technical employees have started writing production-level code while automation increasingly handles routine workflows. The company employed about 4,951 workers at the end of 2025. This means the lay-offs are expected to affect roughly 700 employees. Armstrong said affected US-based workers would receive at least 16 weeks of base pay, and additional two weeks for every year worked, continued healthcare coverage and their next equity vest. Armstrong also said Coinbase would flatten its organisational structure to no more than five layers below the CEO and COO. He said Coinbase plans to build smaller, highly focused “AI-native” teams, capable of moving faster and operating with fewer employees. The company is also experimenting with “one person teams,” where engineers, designers and product managers could eventually be consolidated into a single role. The company is the latest in a list of major technology firms that have linked workforce reductions to the rise of artificial intelligence. Oracle cut thousands of jobs earlier this year as its focus increased on AI. Amazon cut many corporate workers through several rounds of lay-offs from late 2025 into 2026 in a bid to streamline operations. Meta recently launched another wave of job cuts affecting roughly 8,000 employees as the company moved toward AI investments. Coinbase was founded in 2012 during the early days of cryptocurrency trading. Coinbase has experienced sharp swings in fortune tied to volatility in digital currency markets. More recently, trading activity has cooled as attention moves to AI.