Late last week, Wix joined a flurry of tech companies that have been citing AI as a motivation for layoffs, and one expert says this pattern reveals a trend companies have been reluctant to admit for years.
Avishai Abrahami, the CEO of the Israel-based website-building company, said in a post on X that Wix would cut roughly 20% of its staff, or just over 1,000 people based on its last employee count of 5,277 found in a May filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In announcing the layoffs, Abrahami cited the strain that the strengthening of the Israeli currency, the shekel, against the U.S. dollar is causing for the company. But he also pointed to AI and the company’s need to adapt to changing times.
When reached for comment, a Wix spokesperson referred Fortune to Abrahami’s layoff announcement.
In his announcement, Abrahami mentioned AI as “the most significant shift in how companies are built since the invention of modern programming languages in the 1970s,” and added that Wix needed to adapt “to become a faster, leaner, and flatter organization.”
