What is Block's AI strategy?
Block's AI strategy is to rebuild the company itself around AI. Dhanji Prasanna wrote a memo to Jack Dorsey in October 2023 urging big AI investments and was then made CTO, Forbes reported, and Block began developing goose, its open-source agent framework, in early 2024. Its November 2025 investor day set four aims: automate every function with goose, let anyone build mission-critical custom apps with an internal tool called G2, automate customer support, and fully capitalize on AI automation for software development. On February 26, 2026 Block said it would shrink from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000 because "intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company"; a March 31, 2026 essay by Dorsey and board member Roelof Botha described a company built "as an intelligence (or mini-AGI)" without a permanent middle management layer. As of early April 2026, 100% of employees used AI tools and Builderbot made 15% of production code changes nearly fully autonomously; in June, agentic AI helped write and review nearly all of them. The customer-facing agents are Moneybot in Cash App, with over 1 million weekly engaged accounts in Q2 2026, and Managerbot for Square sellers. Block keeps its stack model-agnostic, and its 2025 10-K warns that it depends on third-party large language models it does not control. Block does not disclose AI spending.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Data as of Oct 22, 2026 · Block profile updated Oct 22, 2026 · 22 sources cited on this page · 52 fintechs profiled on this site · Markdown
What have Block's leaders said about AI, and when?
In date order. Block's own letters, presentations and posts are cited where it published the statement itself; interviews are attributed to the outlet.
| Statement or move | Who | When | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Writes a memo urging Block to take AI seriously and invest heavily; a month later Dorsey offers him the CTO role | Dhanji Prasanna | October 2023 | Forbes[1] |
| "By the end of this year, goose will act as a personal CFO for consumers and a COO for sellers" | Jack Dorsey | May 1, 2025 (earnings call) | PYMNTS[10] |
| "Our top priority in 2025 has been to automate how we operate. Being ahead of the AI revolution is critical to our success"; Block has "developed our own general AI agent" | Arnaud Weber, AI and engineering presentation | November 19, 2025 | Investor day deck[3] |
| "Intelligence will be at the core of how the entire company works"; four things to build: customer capabilities, interfaces, proactive intelligence and "an intelligence model to fully orchestrate the company's operations" | Jack Dorsey, shareholder letter | February 26, 2026 | Q4 2025 letter[4] |
| A 40% increase in production code shipped per engineer since September 2025; a risk model for a BNPL product built in two days instead of a quarter | Amrita Ahuja | March 2026 (Morgan Stanley TMT conference) | Block post[11] |
| Block wants "a company built as an intelligence (or mini-AGI)"; roles normalize to individual contributors, directly responsible individuals and player-coaches, with "no need for a permanent middle management layer" | Jack Dorsey and Roelof Botha | March 31, 2026 | Block essay[6] |
| Over the 2025 holidays leaders found models such as Anthropic's Opus 4.6 and OpenAI's Codex 5.3 more powerful than before, then asked the "minimal number of people" needed to run, comply and grow | Jack Dorsey | April 2026 (podcast) | Fortune[7] |
| "We built goose in early 2024 to work with any model because betting on a single lab means inheriting its ceiling" | Block shareholder letter | August 5, 2026 | Q2 2026 letter[8] |
| Signs the Open Weights and American AI Leadership letter with NVIDIA, Microsoft, Meta, IBM and more than 100 other companies | Block | July 31, 2026 | Block post[12] |
Which AI products and tools has Block shipped, and in what order?
Block's investor day timeline marks its early machine-learning milestones with dates it calls illustrative; later rows carry the date of the announcement.
| Product | What it does | Built on | Since |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine learning for seller onboarding and risk modeling | Automated seller onboarding and risk models | In-house machine learning | 2012 (illustrative, per Block)[3] |
| goose | Open-source framework for agents that take real-world actions; asks for confirmation before making changes | Model-agnostic; early adopter of Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (November 2024) | January 28, 2025 (open-sourced)[13][14] |
| Square AI | Conversational assistant for sellers in Square Dashboard, public beta for all U.S. sellers | goose | June 3, 2025[15] |
| Cashbot | Cash App support assistant; share of inquiries resolved without a human advocate doubled from 30% to over 60% between February and March 2025 | Large language models | July 23, 2025[16] |
| G2 | Internal tool to let anyone develop mission-critical custom apps | Not stated | Q3 2025 (internal launch, illustrative)[3] |
| Moneybot | Cash App assistant that surfaces spending and income insights and suggests actions; minimum viable product built in six weeks | goose | November 13, 2025[17][3] |
| Managerbot | Square Dashboard agent that proposes actions sellers approve; minimum viable product built in eight weeks; open beta April 28, 2026 | goose | April 28, 2026[18][3] |
| Builderbot | Slack-based orchestration of multiple agents across Block's codebase; merges about 1,500 pull requests a week, about 15% of production code changes; does not access customer data | goose | June 17, 2026[19] |
| Buzz and Berd | Open-source tools for people and agents to work together: Buzz group chat (July 2026) and Berd desktop workspace for goose, Claude Code and Codex (August 2026) | goose, Claude Code, Codex | 2026[20][21] |
Where does AI sit in Block's organization, and what do its filings say?
AI is run from the top. Dorsey, who signs the shareholder letters with Amrita Ahuja, wrote the February 2026 letter that tied the restructuring to intelligence tools; CTO Dhanji Prasanna greenlit goose, which a small team of roughly up to eight engineers maintains, Forbes reported. Brad Axen, Head of AI Capabilities, speaks for Builderbot, and Arnaud Weber presented the AI and engineering plan at the 2025 investor day. Block described Ahuja as its "Foundational Lead" in March 2026.[4][1][19][3][11]
Block reports its own adoption metrics. At the November 2025 investor day it cited about 7,500 employees active on AI tools weekly, 65% of Cash App support cases using AI, more than 90% of code submissions authored partially or fully with AI, and a 30% rise in code changes per engineer per week from May to mid-October 2025. By mid-April 2026, production code changes per engineer were up over 2.5x compared with January, per the Q1 2026 letter.[3][2]
The 2025 Form 10-K ties AI to the job cut and to risk. It says the February 2026 workforce plan will reduce headcount by more than 40% with "an increased reliance on automation, proactive intelligence capabilities and AI tools", that Block's use of AI "depends on third-party large language models that we do not control" which "may generate inaccurate, biased, or unexpected outputs", and that Block has released technology such as AI agents under open source licenses.[9]
What is not disclosed: AI spending or compute budget, which model providers power which customer products and in what share, cost savings attributed to AI rather than to the restructuring as a whole, and Moneybot or Managerbot outcomes beyond engagement measures Block defines itself.[9][8]
What does the Block profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the Block AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Oct 22, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 14 dated moves, 8 use cases and 16 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moneybot (Cash App) | In-app assistant that surfaces spending, income and savings insights and proactively recommends actions; generally available with over 1 million weekly engaged accounts in Q2 2026, with about 70% of conversations started from proactive prompts in Q1 2026. | In production | [2][8] |
| Builderbot and goose | Builderbot, part of Block's agent stack built on goose, was making 15% of production code changes nearly fully autonomously as of early April 2026, with people making the final decision to push to production; in June 2026 agentic AI helped write and review nearly all production code changes. | In production | [2][8] |
| Model-agnostic model platform | Block says it built goose to work with any model because betting on a single lab means inheriting its ceiling, and runs one internal platform for model access, routing, tools and permissions so it can switch when a better model ships. | In production | [8] |
| Evaluation systems and human sign-off | Block runs evaluation systems that let it improve quality independently of the underlying models; for Builderbot's autonomous code changes people make the final decision to push to production, and incident rates after code changes fell over 70% year over year in Q1 2026. | In production | [8][2] |
| Berd (open-source agent workspace) | A desktop application, now open source, that Block's own teams use to work with AI agents built on goose, Claude Code and Codex across projects, skills, tools and models in one environment. | In production | [21] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 20, 2026 | Block joins the Open Secure AI Alliance | Block joined the Linux Foundation-hosted Open Secure AI Alliance, a group of more than 120 companies including Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel and Visa, arguing AI security tooling should be developed and shared in the open rather than concentrated among a few vendors. | [22] |
| Aug 18, 2026 | Berd, a desktop app for working with AI agents, goes open source | Block open-sourced Berd, built internally so its teams could work with agents across goose, Claude Code and Codex in one consistent environment, giving each agent a distinctive visual identity. | [21] |
| Jul 21, 2026 | Dorsey unveils Buzz, Block's agent collaboration app | Dorsey announced Buzz, an open-source group chat platform built by Block that puts people and their AI agents in the same conversations and manages GitHub projects; Block's Q2 letter describes it as its internally developed system for agent collaboration, launched in July. | [20][8] |
| May 7, 2026 | Q1 2026: Moneybot live across Cash App, every employee using AI | Block's shareholder letter said 100% of employees were using AI tools as of early April, Builderbot was making 15% of production code changes nearly fully autonomously, Moneybot was live across Cash App, and Managerbot was available to over 1 million sellers with US general availability expected in June. | [2] |
| Feb 26, 2026 | Block cuts more than 4,000 jobs in an AI overhaul | With Q4 2025 results, Block said it would go from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000; CFO Amrita Ahuja said the aim was to move faster with smaller teams using AI to automate more work. Shares rose as much as 24% in extended trading. | [5][4] |
| Jan 28, 2025 | Block open-sources codename goose | Block Open Source introduced goose, an open-source framework for building AI agents that take real-world actions such as running commands and modifying files; goose suggests actions but asks for confirmation before making changes. | [13] |
Why did Block cut 40% of its staff?
Block said on February 26, 2026 that "intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company" and that a significantly smaller team using its tools can do more. Jack Dorsey later told a podcast, per Fortune, that leaders worked out the minimal number of people needed to keep the service up, stay compliant and grow.
What is goose?
goose is Block's open-source AI agent framework, developed from early 2024 and open-sourced on January 28, 2025. It is model-agnostic, asks for confirmation before making changes, and underpins Square AI, Moneybot, Managerbot and Builderbot. Block contributed it to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation, which it co-founded with Anthropic and OpenAI in December 2025.
Which AI models does Block use?
Block says it built goose to work with any model rather than bet on one lab. Its teams use goose alongside Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex through Berd, and Dorsey cited Anthropic's Opus 4.6 and OpenAI's Codex 5.3 as the models that convinced leaders to restructure. The 10-K says Block depends on third-party large language models.
How much of Block's code is written by AI?
Builderbot was making 15% of production code changes nearly fully autonomously as of early April 2026, merging about 1,500 pull requests a week, and Block said that in June 2026 agentic AI helped write and review nearly all of its production code changes. People still make the final decision to push to production.
Who leads AI at Block?
Jack Dorsey sets the direction and wrote the March 2026 essay describing Block as "an intelligence" with Roelof Botha. CTO Dhanji Prasanna, who urged the AI push in an October 2023 memo, oversees goose; Brad Axen is Head of AI Capabilities and speaks for Builderbot.
- How Block's CTO Is Working To Reinvent Jack Dorsey's Payments Company For The AI Era
- Q1 2026 Shareholder Letter (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K)
- Block Investor Day 2025: AI & Engineering Excellence (presentation)
- Q4 2025 Shareholder Letter (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K)
- Block shares soar as much as 24% as company slashes workforce by nearly half
- From Hierarchy to Intelligence
- Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey breaks down his thought process when he laid off 40% of his Block staff because of AI
- Q2 2026 Shareholder Letter (Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K)
- Block, Inc. Annual Report 2025 (Form 10-K)
- Square Adds Conversational AI Assistant to Business Technology Platform
- Block's Amrita Ahuja at the 2026 Morgan Stanley TMT Conference
- Why Block signed the Open Weights letter
- Introducing codename goose
- Introducing the Model Context Protocol
- Square AI, Now in Open Beta, Unlocks Business Insights
- Cash App's Cashbot Brings Thoughtful, AI-Powered Support to Millions
- Cash App debuts a new AI assistant that answers questions about your finances
- Square Brings Managerbot to More Sellers, Giving Main Street an Intelligent Business Agent
- Block rolls out Builderbot, a new suite of AI-native tools that changes the way we ship
- Jack Dorsey is taking on Slack with Buzz, a group chat platform for teams and their AI agents
- Designing AI with character: what we learned building Berd
- Block Joins the Open Secure AI Alliance
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