Artificial intelligence now helps write more than 95% of Coinbase’s code, offering new insight into the crypto exchange’s AI strategy following its decision to cut 14% of its workforce earlier this year.
Coinbase cut 700 staff in May. In an email to employees, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said AI has “dramatically” changed the pace of work and there was a need to “return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core.”
“Effectively, 100% of our employees are using AI on a daily basis here,” Coinbase’s head of platform, Rob Witoff, told Cointelegraph. “And close to 100% of our code, probably somewhere between 95% and 100%, is written by or with LLMs today.”
The figure is more than double Coinbase’s February estimate, when the company said 40% of its code was written with AI, reflecting the accelerating pace of AI adoption across tech and crypto companies.
Rob Witoff talks about Coinbase’s adoption of AI. Source: Cointelegraph
Witoff, however, said there is a “wide spectrum” in how it is used and the degree to which it is relied on. While writing core cryptography mainly relies on human input, prototyping is fully automated and core systems sit somewhere in the middle, he said.
“For example, when we’re writing core cryptography, we have industry-leading cryptographers that are meticulously researching and reviewing one line at a time.”
“We’re using AI quite a bit to test and make sure the code we’ve written is working the way it should, there’s no vulnerabilities, we’re verifying the math, but that’s a much more manual part than where we’re building internal prototypes, which is now effectively a 100% automated.”
Smaller teams with “tastemakers”
The shift has allowed Coinbase to reorganize around smaller, more senior teams, Witoff said, with two or three employees now capable of handling work that previously required 10 or more people.
“There were a lot of junior development roles that were impacted,” he said of the May layoffs, though the cuts extended across the company, including marketing, legal, customer support and compliance roles.
“For those smaller teams to work, for people to have the taste, the judgment, I think a lot about people having the battle scars so they know how to point agents in the right direction.”
Witoff said that most Coinbase engineers now have five to 10 AI agents operating at any given time, with AI agents collectively performing the coding work of about 1,200 employees.
By 2030, Coinbase could see AI agents doing the equivalent work of 100,000 employees, he said.
Coinbase said its AI spend has remained “flat” despite growing token use. Source: Brian Armstrong
Related: Robinhood says its AI agent feature will ‘soon’ be assisting crypto traders
Coinbase was part of a wave of companies to lay off staff this year amid a rise in enterprise AI. In March, crypto exchange Crypto.com cut 12% of its staff, impacting roles “that do not adapt in our new world.”
In February, Block CEO Jack Dorsey said he was cutting 40% of Block’s workforce.
“We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company,” Dorsey said on X.
Other crypto companies that cited AI-related efficiencies in this year’s layoffs included Kraken, Gemini, Messari and Dune.
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