Bolt CEO fires entire HR team for ‘creating problems that didn't exist,’ replaces them with AI

• Bolt CEO says the HR team created issues that didn't exist.

• He said these issues disappeared after the entire HR department was laid off.

• The development has sparked debates on the risks artificial intelligence poses to the human workforce.

Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow, while speaking at Fortune's Workforce Innovation Summit on May 19, 2026, defended why the company decided to fire the company's entire Human Resources (HR) team. According to him, the HR department was creating non-existent problems that suddenly vanished after the layoff.

The decision to fire the HR was part of the company's April 2026 round off layoff, which affected 30% of the company's workforce. The company, which reached a peak valuation of $11 billion, decided to revert to its early start-up model of running the operations with a smaller and more efficient team.

Part of the reason given by the Bolt leadership team for scrapping the entire HR department was a decision to cut costs and embrace efficiency by pivoting to a leaner team that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and a small human team.

The massive improvement in the capacity of AI to carry out complex tasks, especially across multiple industries, has become a major concern for the safety of humans in the workforce. What started as a technological advancement to improve the efficiency of goods production in large-scale warehouses across China and the United States has gradually become the rise of intelligent software capable of writing, solving complex equations, planning and executing basic tasks.

Earlier in 2026, the CEO of fintech company Block, formerly Square, Jack Dorsey, took to the social media platform X to announce the company's decision to let go of 4,000 employees. Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter before selling the company for 44 billion USD to Elon Musk, said the layoff was necessitated by the need to correct the company's overhiring sparked by the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and the desire to embrace AI at a significant level.

In the last few years, AI has advanced in capacity for mass usage. More recently, tech company Anthropic has widened the scope of artificial intelligence in the workforce through its product Claude, which can work across different sectors, including content creation, social media management, writing, planning, and scheduling.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which is one of the leading companies in artificial intelligence, has spoken on the capacity of AI to replace most entry and junior-level roles.

With the advancement of AI putting more jobs at risk, there continues to be a debate between protecting human interest and improving technological and production capacity. Earlier in 2026, a Chinese court held that it was illegal to sack workers simply for the purpose of replacing them with AI.