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Coinbase has announced a reduction of approximately 14% of its global workforce as the largest US crypto exchange reorganizes around AI.
The exchange's New York-listed shares rose around 3.8% in pre-market trading on 5 May to about $211 as of 12:25 UTC as the market responded positively to the prospect of a leaner cost structure.
Chief executive Brian Armstrong announced the cuts in an email to staff, citing converging pressures of cyclical weakness in crypto markets and the accelerating impact of AI on how engineering and product work is performed.
Armstrong said the company is not simply reducing headcount but fundamentally rebuilding Coinbase as what he described as an AI-native organization, with humans aligned around automated systems rather than embedded within them.
Flatter structure, smaller teams
Armstrong outlined a series of operational changes accompanying the redundancies. The company will cap its management hierarchy at five layers below the chief executive and chief operating officer, with leaders expected to carry as many as 15 direct reports.
All managers will be required to function as active individual contributors rather than pure administrators. The company also plans to experiment with reduced team sizes, including single-person pods in which engineers, designers and product managers are combined in one role.
"All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action," Armstrong said in a post on X.
"We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core."
Crypto industry accelerates AI pivot
The Coinbase announcement is the most significant in a series of AI-driven workforce reductions across the digital asset sector.
Block, the payments conglomerate led by Jack Dorsey, eliminated more than 4,000 positions in February, with shares rising more than 20% on expectations of margin expansion.
Meanwhile, Crypto.com cut 12% of its roughly 1,500-strong workforce in March, with chief executive Kris Marszalek warning that firms failing to make a rapid AI transition would not survive the shift.
Armstrong struck a similar note, acknowledging that AI now allows engineers to deliver in days work that previously required weeks, and that non-technical staff are increasingly able to deploy production code autonomously.