Shocking that the place that thinks you can get anything for $5 doesn’t value human labor.
Fiverr, the online marketplace for freelancers, announced that it is laying off about 250 full-time staff members as part of an effort to transform itself into an “AI-first company.” The layoffs will affect about 30% of the company’s staff and are part of what CEO Micha Kaufman called a “painful reset” in a message to his staff, which he also posted on X—though certainly one that will be more painful for the workers losing their jobs than for him.
Kaufman claims the layoffs mark Fiverr returning to “startup mode” despite being a 16-year-old company. His goal, according to the memo, is to turn Fiverr into “an AI-first company that’s leaner, faster, with a modern AI-focused tech infrastructure, a smaller team, each with substantially greater productivity, and far fewer management layers.” That new version of Fiverr, he claims, won’t “need as many people to operate the existing business.
