Upwork cut about a quarter of its staff, with its CEO saying AI lets smaller teams do more

Upwork is laying off approximately a quarter of its workforce, chief executive Hayden Brown told employees on May 7, 2026, in a message the company published. She gave two reasons: the company moves faster with smaller teams, and it needs to meet its profitability goals as growth may be slower in the near term. "Two pizza teams are dead," she wrote. "AI means smaller, differently resourced teams in product and engineering can make a bigger impact than ever." Upwork said it was consolidating redundant work, collapsing workflows to reduce handoffs and removing management layers. The company did not give a number of jobs, and its AI rationale applies to product and engineering teams rather than to the whole cut.