Coinbase employees must sign up to use AI coding tools or risk losing their jobs, according to CEO Brian Armstrong. The co-founder of the major cryptocurrency exchange has said that Coinbase engineers who refused to give AI coding tools a shot were swiftly let go from the company.
After purchasing enterprise licences for GitHub Copilot and Cursor, Armstrong issued a mandate for every Coinbase engineer to use the AI coding tools. In response, a few Coinbase staffers warned that adoption of AI coding tools among its engineers is likely to take months.
“I went rogue. I said, ‘AI is 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 in an appearance on Stripe co-founder John Collison’s podcast titled ‘Cheeky Pint’.
Armstrong further said that some Coinbase staffers had valid reasons for not setting up their accounts on GitHub Copilot or Cursor like being on vacation. However, others who did not have a “good reason” were fired.
The exact number of Coinbase employees who were fired is not known. Still, it highlights the broader shift from individual choice to corporate mandated adoption of AI tools among several businesses, including in India. A recent survey of 3,000 professionals found that middle managers are leading AI upskilling with 49 per cent of the respondents aged between 35 and 54 stating that they are actively seeking more AI training, compared to 41 per cent of respondents aged between 18 and 24.
In addition, Microsoft’s annual Work Trend Index (WTI) report found that 67 per cent of business leaders report being familiar or extremely familiar with AI agents, compared to 40 per cent of employees.
Armstrong admitted that Coinbase’s new mandate is a “heavy handed approach” and was not well received internally. Both Collison and Armstrong also expressed skepticism about the reliability of AI-generated code. “It’s clear that it is very helpful to have AI helping you write code. It’s not clear how you run an AI-coded code base,” Collison said.
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Going forward, Armstrong said that Coinbase will be conducting monthly meetings with various teams to identify those who have mastered the use of AI tools and share their best practices.
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