Patreon is laying off 20% of its workforce, or 93 people, CEO Jack Conte told employees Thursday. In a memo to staff that was shared online from the company, Conte said that Patreon’s core business is strong, but that the platform needs to respond to market changes and adjust its cost structure to stay stable, which is why it needs to make the “painful” but necessary cuts.
Conte wrote that “artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed the technology industry” and that the pace of change has “never been more intense.” However, Conte went on to note that Patreon isn’t making the cuts because it wants to replace employees with AI.
“To be clear about the impact of artificial intelligence on today’s decision: we are not Making the above changes because we believe AI is replacing humans,” he wrote. “The more we learn to use these new tools, the clearer it becomes that they do not replace the creativity, judgment, detail-orientation or craftsmanship that our teammates have, nor do they replace the desire for human connection that we all love so deeply. This is my personal opinion, but more importantly, it’s the foundation of Patreon’s strategy: our product vision and business is built on the value of human creativity and human connection.”
And he continued, “AI has However, it has fundamentally changed the technology industry, including how we work, how products are made, how we communicate and more. That does have an impact on the way we operate and organize.”
Beyond the headcount reduction, Conte said Patreon is also restructuring how it operates, “flattening” its org chart and refocusing teams around its top priorities. Affected workers will receive at least 16 weeks of severance pay, plus an additional week for each year worked, health care coverage until the end of the year and a $1,500 subsidy to replace their company laptop.
Last week, Patreon announced it was working with internet infrastructure provider Cloudflare to directly block access to AI bots designed to train their AI models on the work of unlicensed creators. The company said it had to step up its efforts on that front because AI scraping has become more sophisticated. The move comes as online publishers and creators battle AI companies that use their work to train AI models.
Patreon’s latest round of layoffs is the platform’s biggest since it cut 17% of its staff in 2022. During this previous round of layoffs, Patreon also closed its offices in Berlin and Dublin.
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