Coinbase CEO urged engineers to make use of AI—then shocked them by firing those that wouldn’t: ‘I went rogue’

When Coinbase, the biggest U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, acquired enterprise licenses for both GitHub Copilot and Cursor, having employees use the AI coding assistants was a priority for its 42-year-old CEO.

“I mandated it,” Armstrong said on the Cheeky Pint podcast with Stripe cofounder and president John Collison. 

As he tells it, Armstrong heard it might take quarters to onboard the company’s computer engineers to the AI coding tools. Instead, he “went rogue” with a post in Slack asking every engineer to onboard by the end of the week.

“I was like, ‘AI’s important. We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it and I’d like to meet with you to understand why,’” Armstrong said.

At the Saturday meeting, Armstrong showed how important the AI mandate was. 

“Some of them had a good reason because they were just getting back from some trip or something,” Armstrong said. “Some of them didn’t, and they got fired.”

Coinbase did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment. 

Armstrong is one of many tech CEOs who have pushed AI adoption as a necessity for their workforce. CEOs at Google, Microsoft, and Shopify have mandated or strongly encouraged using AI, especially for engineering teams. Others, like Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, have even warned AI could mean a smaller workforce at their companies in the future. 

AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot and Cursor have increasingly become the go-to tool for computer programmers because they can fill gaps and save time, among other uses. The tools’ widespread adoption is evident in a GitHub survey of 500 U.S. programmers at big companies that found 92% were already using the AI tools while 70% said the tools give them an edge in their work. 

While some people criticized Armstrong for the heavy-handedness, he said at least the ordeal set a clear bar for the importance of AI at Coinbase. 

Apart from the mandate on AI coding assistants, Coinbase also hosts “AI speedruns” monthly in which an employee who is implementing the technology well will host a seminar for the rest of the company. Armstrong claims about a third of the company’s code is written by AI with a goal for 50% by the end of the quarter. He’s encouraged other teams outside of engineering to use the technology too.

“Even as CEO, by the way, I use it a lot,” he said.