Tailwind just became the first major dev tool company to explicitly blame AI for mass layoffs. That should terrify you — but not for the reason you think.
Adam Wathan, CEO of Tailwind, just fired 75% of his engineering team. He pointed to AI's brutal impact on their business. Three of the four engineers are gone. But the real story isn't about AI killing jobs. It's about a business model that was always living on borrowed time.
The Business Was the Bug
Tailwind CSS is free. It's open source. Millions of developers use it daily.
However, the business supporting Tailwind earned its keep by marketing Tailwind UI — ready-made component templates that you purchase and incorporate into your work. That's where the money came from, not the framework, but the components.
