Afterpay co-founder Nick Molnar has defended Block’s decision to slash more than 4000 jobs in the name of artificial intelligence, dismissing suggestions the cuts were driven by years of over-hiring rather than a genuine technological shift.
In an interview with this masthead, Molnar – who serves as Block’s global head of sales and marketing – said the layoffs announced by chief executive Jack Dorsey last week reflected a structural transformation in how technology companies operate.
“This is not about making a decision from a position of weakness,” Molnar said. “It’s about making a decision from a position of strength.”
Block is the US payments giant behind services such as Square, Cash App and Afterpay, which process payments for individuals and companies.
Its job cuts are among the first of AI-attributed workforce reductions sweeping the technology sector. In Australia alone, WiseTech Global has flagged plans to cut 2000 roles, the Commonwealth Bank is deploying AI tools to reduce its reliance on offshore contractors, and Atlassian has continued trimming engineering teams. Globally, Salesforce, Amazon, Pinterest and CrowdStrike have all announced significant cuts linked to AI in recent months.
However, the AI justification for the corporate job culling has drawn scepticism: OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has used the term “AI-washed” to describe companies justifying layoffs as driven by AI efficiencies rather than earlier over-hiring. Former Block employee Jason Karsh wrote on X that the announcement was “a workforce correction wearing an AI costume”.
‘The AI piece is real. What these tools can do now is fundamentally different to where they were even a year ago.’
Nick Molnar
Nick Molnar co-founded Afterpay in 2014 with Anthony Eisen after spotting a generational shift away from credit cards. The company grew into Australia’s most prominent fintech export before being acquired by Dorsey’s Block for $39 billion in 2021, making Molnar the country’s youngest self-made billionaire. He now serves as Block’s global head of sales and marketing.
“Some people that I built Afterpay with from the very early days were unfortunately in the population that’s in consultation [about their jobs being cut] right now,” he said. “And none of that comes from anything but immense gratitude.”
His comments are the first detailed public remarks from a senior Block executive since Dorsey announced on February 26 that the payments company would reduce its workforce from over 10,000 to fewer than 6000 in one of the largest AI-attributed workforce reductions in corporate history. It was the third round of layoffs at Block in less than three years.
Afterpay insiders say about half of the company’s local workforce of 1300 is being made redundant, with entire teams across legal, design, product and engineering wiped out. Most of Block’s Australian communications department is also being laid off.
One affected employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were dropping their children at daycare when their phone started lighting up with messages from colleagues asking if they had been affected by the job cuts. “Ten minutes later, I was still sitting in the daycare car park reading Jack’s email, which was already public, followed by an HR note saying my role was entering consultation,” they said. “My heart just sank.”
Justifying Block’s massive job cuts, Dorsey cited rapidly improving AI models as the primary driver and predicted most companies would reach the same conclusion within 12 months. Block’s stock surged as much as 24 per cent after it announced the move.
Molnar agreed, saying AI tools had “meaningfully accelerated in their capabilities, particularly from the end of last year” and that a smaller, flatter team would lead to faster execution and better outcomes for customers.
He said he had been consulted on the decision and took “full responsibility” for the changes alongside Block’s broader leadership team.
A current Block employee, who was not affected by the cuts, described a different atmosphere among remaining staff. “There’s a palpable sense of excitement among the people who are still here,” the employee said. “People are banding together and realising this is our opportunity to actually be in front of what’s next.”
Molnar pushed back on claims that Dorsey was using AI as convenient cover. “Jack has been very transparent about the decisions he’s made – what worked, what didn’t,” he said. “But the AI piece is real. What these tools can do now is fundamentally different to where they were even a year ago.”
Dorsey, Molnar said, “is one of the best visionaries in the world. Particularly at this time, I think there’s no better leader than Jack to take the company through the transition that we’re all seeing immediately in front of us.”
Meanwhile, a parallel effort has been unfolding across LinkedIn and private Slack channels as senior technology leaders – several of them Block alumni with Australian roots – mobilised their networks to find work for displaced colleagues.
Among those leading the effort is Manik Surtani, Block’s Sydney-based head of open source, who last year helped establish the Agentic AI Foundation alongside OpenAI and Anthropic. Surtani has been collecting details of laid-off staff and referring them into open roles across his network. Tom Adams, a Griffith University graduate who spent six years as head of engineering at Block’s Cash App, has been doing the same.
The “Square Mafia” – a private Slack group for Block alumni – has swelled to nearly 3800 members. Open to anyone who has left Block, the channel has become a clearing house for job referrals, networking and practical advice on severance, equity and healthcare.
“There’s a stereotype about tech bro culture being hyper-competitive or transactional,” said the employee affected by the job cuts. “But this was a rare look under the surface. The way people have shown up, publicly and behind the scenes, has given me hope.”
It comes as the company readies the Australian launch of Square AI, a conversational AI assistant built into the Square platform that goes live on Monday and is free for all local Square sellers. The tool allows merchants to query their sales, staffing and performance data in plain English, and adds external factors such as local weather and events to inform operational decisions.
Molnar said the decision to make the tool free was driven by Square’s core business model: the more payments a business processes, the more revenue Square generates.
Research commissioned by Square and conducted by international polling firm Censuswide found that while 64 per cent of Australian business owners already use AI in some capacity, fewer than half do so regularly. Business owners reported spending an average of 3.34 hours per week on data analysis, time they believe AI could reduce.
“We’re not asking businesses to change how they work,” Molnar said. “We’re giving them a smarter way to understand what’s already happening inside their business.”
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David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
