AI Industry Sees Surge in Wealth Amid Widespread Layoffs

The trend appears to be accelerating. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in two years last month, with nearly 40,000 cuts, and AI was the most-cited reason for layoffs across every industry for the third month running, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

There’s growing skepticism that AI is really the culprit, though — that it’s more of a convenient cover story than the actual cause. Few examples illustrate the pushback better than what happened at the payments outfit Block. After getting hammered over laying off nearly half the company earlier this year, Jack Dorsey denied the cuts were a sign of trouble, insisting instead that AI tools “are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” But pressed by commenters on X about the bloat he’d created during the pandemic, Dorsey later acknowledged that Block had, in fact, overhired.