Coinbase Cuts 700 Jobs and Restructures Around AI as Crypto Downturn Deepens

Coinbase is laying off 14% of its workforce and rebuilding around AI-native teams as revenue declines and CEO Brian Armstrong pushes to flatten the company’s management structure.

Coinbase laid off approximately 700 employees, or 14% of its workforce, CEO Brian Armstrong announced in a memo posted to X on Tuesday. The cuts take effect immediately, and the company expects $50 million to $60 million in restructuring charges, primarily in Q2 2026.

Armstrong cited two converging forces. Revenue fell 21.6% in Q4 2025, and the company posted a $667 million net loss during that quarter. Bitcoin has dropped more than a third from its $126,000 peak last October. Armstrong said the exchange needs to “adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient.”

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

The second force is AI. Armstrong said engineers can now build in days what previously took teams weeks, and that non-technical employees are writing production code and automating workflows that once required larger headcounts. The company is restructuring around “AI-native pods” — small teams, potentially as few as one person, combining engineering, design, and product responsibilities into a single role. Management layers will be capped at five below the CEO and COO, and every leader will be required to remain an active individual contributor.

Mizuho Securities analyst Dan Dolev told Bloomberg that the crypto downturn is “probably the real reason for most of the cuts” and that AI is “an easy excuse.” But the restructuring goes deeper than headcount. Armstrong’s stated goal is to rebuild Coinbase as “an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it.”

This is not the first time Coinbase has cut during a downturn. The exchange laid off 18% of its workforce in 2022 and another 21% in January 2023. The 2026 cuts join a broader industry wave: Block cut nearly half its workforce earlier this year, citing AI, Crypto.com trimmed 12%, and Algorand cut 25% in late March.

U.S. employees will receive at least 16 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for every year of service. The announcement lands ahead of Coinbase’s Q1 earnings report on Thursday.