Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong informed employees in an early morning message Tuesday that the cryptocurrency exchange would eliminate roughly 14% of its workforce — about 700 jobs — as the company restructures around artificial intelligence.

Armstrong shared the memo publicly on social media shortly before 7 a.m., telling staff the cuts were necessary as AI rapidly reshapes how work is done across the tech industry.

The billionaire co-founder said impacted employees would receive additional details within the hour, though some workers later said their access to company systems had already been limited by the time the email landed.

“I know this feels sudden and harsh,” Armstrong wrote, while describing the layoffs as a difficult but necessary move tied to the company’s responsibility to safeguard customer data.

He maintained that Coinbase remained financially strong and positioned for future growth, but said market pressures required the company to “rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native.”

According to the CEO, engineers using AI tools are now able to complete projects in days that previously took teams weeks to finish.

He added that nontechnical employees have started writing production-level code while automation increasingly handles routine workflows.

Coinbase employed 4,951 workers at the end of 2025, meaning the cuts are expected to affect roughly 700 employees.

Armstrong said affected US-based workers would receive at least 16 weeks of base pay, along with an additional two weeks for every year worked, continued healthcare coverage and their next equity vest.

The CEO also outlined a sweeping cultural overhaul inside Coinbase, saying the company would flatten its organizational structure to no more than five layers below the CEO and COO.

Armstrong said Coinbase plans to build smaller, highly focused “AI-native” teams capable of moving faster and operating with fewer employees.

He added that the company is experimenting with “one person teams,” where engineers, designers and product managers could eventually be consolidated into a single role.

Coinbase joins a growing list of major technology firms that have linked workforce reductions to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Oracle reportedly slashed thousands of jobs earlier this year as the cloud computing giant intensified its focus on AI.

Amazon has also shed large numbers of corporate workers through several rounds of layoffs stretching from late 2025 into 2026. Executives there said the goal was to reduce bureaucracy and streamline operations.

Meta recently launched another significant wave of cuts affecting roughly 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, as the company redirected spending away from the metaverse and toward AI investments.

Other tech firms including Block and Atlassian have also announced sizable layoffs while citing the need to prioritize artificial intelligence initiatives.

Armstrong said the changes at Coinbase would go beyond staffing reductions.

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase:

Team,

Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the…

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) May 5, 2026

He wrote that he wants to fundamentally reshape how the company operates by flattening management layers, eliminating what he referred to as “pure managers,” and encouraging executives to function more like hands-on “player-coaches.”

Coinbase was founded in 2012 during the early days of cryptocurrency trading, when Bitcoin was valued at roughly $6.

The company later went public during the pandemic-era crypto frenzy, a period when Bitcoin prices surged dramatically and enthusiasm for digital assets exploded.

Like much of the crypto industry, Coinbase has experienced sharp swings in fortune tied to volatility in digital currency markets.

Its valuation plunged after the post-pandemic crypto collapse, wiping out much of the company’s market value before rebounding as Bitcoin climbed to record highs last year.

More recently, trading activity has cooled while investor and industry attention has increasingly shifted toward artificial intelligence.