Coinbase laid off 700 employees in May. In his e-mail to employees, company CEO Brian Armstrong stated that artificial intelligence has dramatically changed the pace of activity and that, as an organization with artificial intelligence at its center, there is a need to return to the speed and focus of the startup period.
Rob Witoff, Coinbase's platform manager, said that almost all employees use artificial intelligence every day, and 95 to 100 percent of the code is written with or through large language models today. That figure is double the company's February estimate, when it announced that 40 percent of its code was written with artificial intelligence. This significant increase reflects accelerating AI adoption across technology and crypto companies.
Witoff emphasized, however, that there is a wide range in use. According to the analyst, core cryptography relies heavily on human input, while prototyping is entirely automated, with core systems falling in between. Witoff stated that while writing core cryptography, leading cryptography experts in the industry meticulously researched and examined each line. Witoff said that the company uses artificial intelligence extensively to ensure that the code it writes works as expected and does not have any security vulnerabilities, adding that this is a much more manual process compared to internal prototypes.
According to Witoff, this transformation allowed Coinbase to restructure around smaller, more senior teams. Two or three employees can now carry out work that previously required 10 or more people. Witoff said the layoffs in May affected many lower-level software roles, but the cuts spread across the company, including marketing, legal, customer support and compliance.
Witoff emphasized that for small teams to work, employees must have the experience and judgment to point agents in the right direction. He noted that most engineers at the company now have five to 10 artificial intelligence agents working at the same time, with these agents doing the coding work for a total of about 1,200 employees. Witoff claimed that by 2030, AI agents at Coinbase could do the equivalent of 100,000 employees.
Coinbase is part of a wave of companies laying off employees this year amid the rise of enterprise AI. Crypto exchange Crypto.com laid off 12 percent of its employees in March, citing roles that did not adapt to the new order. In February, Block's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, announced that the company was reducing 40 percent of its workforce.
Dorsey said the intelligence tools they created and used, combined with smaller, more horizontal teams, enabled a new way of operating that fundamentally changed what it means to start and run a company. Other crypto companies citing AI-driven efficiency for layoffs this year included Kraken, Gemini, Messari and Dune.