Bolt Cuts Third of Staff Amid New AI Focus

The move by the one-click checkout startup was first reported Sunday (April 5) by FinTech Business Weekly, with the company later confirming the layoffs and the one-third figure in conversations with PYMNTS.

Fintech Business Weekly cites a message from Bolt Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Breslow posted in the company’s Slack channel, which says artificial intelligence also played a role in the job cuts.

“Today, we made the incredibly difficult decision to say goodbye to about one-third of our team,” the message said.

“Going forward, Bolt will be operating as a much leaner organization and leveraging AI at our core. Developing products and operating in 2026 is very different than it was in prior years and we need to adapt as an organization to be leaner and more AI-centric than ever to keep with competition.”

Another tech company, Block, recently announced it was cutting its staffing levels by around 40% amid a new focus on AI.

As covered here following those layoffs, Block’s move is in line with a larger transition taking place at technology and financial services companies.

“As AI increasingly drafts code, automates internal documentation, analyzes risk signals and handles customer support, the amount of human labor needed for certain workflows shifts. Companies are reconsidering team size relative to output,” PYMNTS wrote.

The FinTech Business Weekly report positioned the layoffs as a part of a larger series of struggles for Bolt. The report, citing sources familiar with the company’s finances, said Bolt has also struggled to pay its vendors since the year began, including crucial contracts with the likes of Amazon Web Services. The report also cited internal company communications which show the company had in January offered to give employees equity in lieu of pay. 

Under this system, employees and contractors would receive shares at a 25% discount vs. Bolt’s share price at its next funding round, which the company planned on “closing out shortly.” Bolt previously cut jobs in 2022 and in 2023.

Writing about super apps earlier this year, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster argued that the concept was facing new competition from the rise of agentic AI.

In the super app space, she argued, discovery is shaped by platform’s priorities, pricing transparency is limited, and the cost of switching is steep. In an agentic world, the agent’s task is to search widely and make honest comparisons before executing on a user’s behalf. This is all shaped by the consumer’s preferences, not a platform’s business model.

“That makes the Super Agent the new front door,” she wrote. “Consumers tell the agent what they want. The agent interprets the request, searches across merchants and services, evaluates tradeoffs and assembles the outcome. Smart Agents don’t need to own the ecosystem; they just need access to all of them.”