This fintech firm is replacing their workers with AI

While AI was supposed to make our lives easier, it seems it might make it harder to get a job and make a living.

AI use has skyrocketed and with it, some jobs are being eliminated. And it seems nearly every sector is being impacted.

Companies replacing workers with AISnap announced on April 15 that it was cutting 1,000 jobs, including 16% of full-time employees, as  “rapid advancements” in AI whill allow it be more efficient.Salesforce cut its workforce as its AI program reduced the role of its support staff, according to Business Insider.IBM has replaced its human resources workers with AI but has hired more salespeople and programmers, the Wall Street Journal reported.HP is reducing the size of its workforce due to AI, CNN reported.Block is also cutting its workforce by 40% and is instead turning to AI, according to The New York Times.

Job losses from AI have come for yet another company, this time in the financial sector.

Fintech company turns to AI amid financial hardships

Bolt Financial, a one-click checkout app company, has been struggling financially since the start of the year, Fintech Business Weekly reported. It hasn’t paid contractors or vendors, including Amazon Web Services.

At first appealing to merchants, Bolt has tried to become a superapp where customers can do all their payment and financial needs, such as banking, crypto trading, and peer-to-peer payments.

The company also announced it plans to fire a third of its workforce and instead use AI.

It’s also not the first time the company has announced layoffs. The fintech firm cut 30% of its workforce in May 2022 and another 39% in 2023, according to BankingDive.

It appears Bolt has been struggling to get financing and even offered employees discounted shares in lieu of a paycheck, according to Fintech Business Weekly.

In a slack channel, Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow told employees that it had tried to retain staff but that “toing forward, Bolt will be operating as a much leaner organization and leveraging AI at our core.”

“Developing products and operating in 2026 is very different than it was in prior years and we need to adapt as an organization to be leaner and more AI-centric than ever to keep with competition…” he wrote, according to Fintech Business Weekly.

Some companies are replacing their workers with AI.

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Controversial AI use

While some have praised AI use for its effiecency, others have questioned its impact on the world.

The vast amounts of energy needed to power data centres for AI are contributing to climate change and creating heat islands in some areas, CNN reported. Meanwhile, governments have warned financial institutions about increasing cybersecurity risks posed by new AI models, TheStreet reported.

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AI may not even be effective as a human replacement. An MIT study found that 95% of AI investments have not generated any returns. Hiring managers are also rehiring for jobs that were eliminated due to AI, Axios reported.  

Some question whether some of these layoffs would have happened regardless of AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that while AI is replacing some jobs, it’s an easy scapegoat for companies on a firing spree, Business Insider reported.  

“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,” Altman told CNBC-TV18 in February.

Related: Anthropic CEO makes shocking admission about AI

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