Robinhood’s note on 10% layoffs shows blaming AI isn’t cutting it

It appears using AI as a cover story for cutting jobs is fast falling out of fashion. Unlike many of his tech industry peers who have cut thousands of jobs this year citing the need to restructure their teams to make the most of AI, Robinhood’s CEO Vlad Tenev conspicuously made no mention of AI in his note to employees announcing that the company is letting go 10% of its full-time employees, or about 290 people. Nor did the company’s regulatory filing announcing the move, which instead framed the cuts as a restructuring exercise. Still, Tenev did say the company would use “frontier technologies to push our execution even further,” which sounds like a conscious effort to avoid even naming AI. Which isn’t surprising: Sentiment against AI and related infrastructure projects has been trending lower even as a small minority of tech executives make ridiculous bank . But Tenev did add to the ongoing narrative that it’s now necessary for companies to operate with smaller teams and “flatter organizational structures,” writing: “We ⁠cannot default to operating as a heavily-layered organization. …