Fiverr is laying off 250 employees, or 30% of its staff, as it transforms into an AI-first company. It looks like this will be common practice by 2025 — Duolingo announced similar plans to go AI-first in April.
Fiverr is laying off 250 employees, or 30% of its staff, as it transforms into an AI-first company. It looks like this will be common practice by 2025 — Duolingo announced similar plans to go AI-first in April.
Founder and CEO Micha Kaufman said on X that AI requires a fundamental rethink, and the 15-year-old freelance services platform is “returning to startup mode.”
“This transformation requires a painful reboot. As a result, we are parting ways with about 250 employees across various departments, creating a smaller, flatter organization,” Kaufman said. “We need to get back to startup mode, which requires speed and agility, a flatter organization, and an infrastructure and methodology focused on AI.”
Part of the reason he justifies why Fiverr “doesn’t need as many people to run an existing business” is that the company has already integrated artificial intelligence into its customer support and fraud detection programs.
Kaufman promised severance pay and expanded health insurance for laid-off employees.
In May, Kaufman said he wouldn’t hire anyone who wasn’t already using AI. He also advised employees to “automate 100%” of their work with AI. He argued that doing so wouldn’t make them replaceable because they were still capable of “nonlinear thinking” and “making informed decisions.” Given recent events, that advice didn’t seem to be very helpful to Fiverr employees themselves.
