Block, the financial services and digital payments company founded by Jack Dorsey, is moving forward with a sweeping restructuring that will see roughly 40% of its workforce eliminated, a decision driven by the company’s investment in artificial intelligence and its impact on operational efficiency. The move, announced earlier this week, was detailed further in a call last night with CFO Amrita Ah, who described a fundamental shift in how Block views its future and the role of human labor within it.
Ah emphasized that the decision wasn’t a reactive measure, but rather the culmination of an 18-month internal effort to develop and deploy AI-powered tools, codenamed “Goose.” According to Ah, these tools are already demonstrating significant gains in productivity. “We can envision that other companies get on that journey as well,” she stated. “We’ve been using tools, developing, actually, our own agents called codename Goose…and so we see directly the power of automating our workflows and building faster using these tools, and that’s what gave us the confidence to do this.”
The company’s internal data reveals a 40% increase in engineering productivity – measured by the rate of production code being shipped – since September. Customer service has also seen substantial gains, with 75% of Cash App customer inquiries now resolved through automation. Ah noted that these automated solutions are not only handling a larger volume of requests but are also achieving strong Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, indicating a positive customer experience. This automation allows Block’s human customer service representatives to focus on more complex issues requiring “taste and judgment.”
The impact of Goose is extending beyond engineering and customer service. Ah indicated that designers are now capable of directly deploying code to production, and accountants are leveraging the AI tools to accelerate financial workflows and derive insights more quickly. This broadening application of AI across multiple disciplines was a key factor in the decision to implement the large-scale restructuring.
Block’s development of Goose is rooted in an open-source framework, designed to be interoperable and extensible. According to a blog post from January 2025, Goose operates as an “intelligent, autonomous agent” capable of handling complex tasks through the coordination of features like extensions and integration with various Large Language Models (LLMs). The company has collaborated with Anthropic on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standardized set of APIs designed to connect AI agents to existing systems and data sources.
Ah offered advice to other CFOs considering similar moves, advocating for a proactive approach. “I believe it’s better to do it a little bit early than to do it too late,” she said. “You often don’t get the aha moment until you realize you’ve automated a piece of your work, something that might have taken days before, can now take hours or less.” She also emphasized the need for financial leaders to become deeply involved in the technical aspects of their organizations, shifting from managing people to managing outcomes and focusing on “system thinking.”
The company’s move comes as other tech firms are also grappling with the implications of AI for their workforces. While Block has framed the layoffs as a strategic investment in future growth, the immediate impact on employees remains significant. Block has not yet detailed the specific timeline for the workforce reduction or the support it will provide to affected employees.
