'AI is not optional': Brian Armstrong lays off staff resisting AI adoption
In John Collison's podcast Cheeky Pint, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said employees who refused to try the tools, after the company purchased enterprise licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor, were promptly fired
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Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong laid off engineers who refused to use AI coding assistants in some capacity, particularly for writing repetitive and mundane code.
In John Collison's podcast Cheeky Pint, Armstrong said employees who refused to try the tools,after Coinbase purchased enterprise licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor, were promptly fired.
The cryptocurrency firm bought licenses to cover every engineer, but some people warned Armstrong that adoption could be slow, taking months to get even half of the engineers on board.
Subsequently, Armstrong wrote on the company’s Slack channel that AI is “important,” adding: “We need you all to learn it at least at the onboarding stage. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week.”
He further warned: “I am hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it, and I would like to meet with you to understand why.”
The CEO explained that while some employees had genuine reasons for not adopting the new tools, others gave trivial excuses. “And they got fired,” he said.
Armstrong wanted to send a clear message: AI is not optional.
Coinbase has also pushed employees to undergo AI training. The company now convenes monthly meetings where teams share creative ways they have mastered using AI.
Armstrong acknowledged the move might have seemed harsh but said it was necessary: “Some people really didn’t like that heavy-handed approach, but I think it did set some clarity—that we need to lean into this and learn about it.”
Currently, 33% of Coinbase’s code is written by AI. Armstrong has set a target of reaching 50% by the end of this quarter. However, he emphasized the importance of human oversight to ensure accuracy, particularly given Coinbase’s financial responsibilities.
AI adoption is rapidly expanding across industries. According to McKinsey & Company, AI could add up to $4.4 trillion to annual global output by 2030.
