"A painful reset" — Fiverr lays off 30% of its employees in a sweeping AI-first overhaul

The gig economy is shaky at best. Unpredictable jobs and income, a lack of health benefits, and long-term employment insecurity are all notable issues related to freelancing.

One of the gig economy's major platforms, Fiverr, recently added some instability in a different manner, this time for full-time employees. The cause? AI.

In an article published on X, Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman announced that the company is "going back to startup mode." This note was shared first with employees, so it reads like an internal memo.

Within the article, Kaufman explains that "the speed at which technology is changing, and the possibilities it brings, are incredible, and they demand new thinking and higher velocity to stay at the top of our game."

Kaufman reminds employees that Fiverr is "one of the companies to embrace AI across everything we do," and that "we need to accelerate this mode of work."

Not only does the company's team of organic employees need to shrink, says Kaufman, but Fiverr's entire infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate AI better.

The plan for Fiverr is to lay off "approximately 250 team members across the different departments" in what Kaufman calls "a painful reset." Considering Fiverr generally operates with roughly 750-800 employees, that's about 30% of staff.

Kaufman doesn't make it clear which types of jobs are on the block to be replaced by AI, but he adds a thank you to the cut employees for their contributions.

He also adds a note to customers that "your business on Fiverr won't be impacted in any way throughout this transformation."

Fiverr's "AI-first" approach is, unfortunately, not unusual

Fiverr is the latest company to announce layoffs due to AI restructuring, but it's certainly not the first. Fiverr's pivot is eerily similar to Duolingo's announcement in April that it was replacing contract workers with AI.

Depending on how closely you've been following AI news, this sort of thing probably no longer comes as a surprise; AI experts and heads of AI firms have been discussing the topic for years.

Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, notably told people to "stop sugar-coating it," stating that he believes AI will cut 50% of entry-level white collar jobs. Elsewhere, AI expert Dr. Roman Yampolskiy has warned of 99% job loss by 2030 due to the rise of AI.

As my colleague Kevin Okemwa reported in July 2025, Microsoft saved $500 million thanks to a combination of more than 15,000 layoffs and increased use of AI. This move coincided with Microsoft's massive $80 billion AI infrastructure investment.

Also in July, Intel announced it was laying off approximately 5,000 US workers to free up capital for AI restructuring. More recently, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff bragged about cutting his workforce by 4,000 as AI is now doing about 50% of the company's work.

It's become clear that AI is directly and indirectly stealing jobs from humans, and it's not likely to slow down anytime soon, as companies see payroll costs fall and profits rise.

As Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, has stated, AI will "deliver the greatest boost to productivity in the history of our species." That doesn't necessarily mean humans will be a part of that revolution.

Suleyman adds:

"It's going to be destabilizing to the way that we currently understand the world to be, the way that we work, and the way our politics operates. Fundamentally, even what it means to be human."

What is Fiverr?

Fiverr is an Israeli-based online platform that essentially acts as a marketplace for freelance work.

Say you're a freelancer with a certain talent, like graphic design. You can use Fiverr to create a listing highlighting your abilities, and you can set a fee for your services.

Then, whenever someone needs a freelancer to handle a specific task, they can search through the countless thousands of listings available. Fiverr gets a cut of the fee whenever a job is completed.

Fiverr doesn't actually do any of the work, just like Best Buy doesn't make the products it sells. Most of the processes are automated or handled by the clients or freelancers.

That helps explain how a company with roughly 4 million customers around the world can operate with such a compact team, now thinned out even more following the AI-related layoffs.