Strong shekel, layoffs at Wix, and the weight of artificial intelligence in the CEO’s decision
Wix is at the center of attention: more than 1,000 people laid off and a statement that stands out for its bluntness in the age of artificial intelligence. Instead of that standard internal email that disappears in the inbox, the company’s CEO, Avishai Abrahami, chose a different path: he published the full message at the same time for all employees and for the public, on his X (formerly Twitter) profile and on LinkedIn. The content, which quickly went viral, laid out in a direct way the reasons behind the largest staff reduction in the company’s history, at around 20% of the global workforce.
Abrahami began by saying, in a personal tone, that it was a sad day and that a very difficult decision had been made. No generic phrases about restructuring or strategic reorganization. He went straight to the point and listed the two factors that, according to him, cornered the company: the appreciation of the Israeli shekel, which blew up local cost projections, and the transformation brought by artificial intelligence (AI), which is profoundly changing how tech companies are built, operated, and managed.
The result was a statement that broke away from the corporate standard, felt more like a public outpouring, and became a reference for anyone tracking how AI is actually being used as both a justification and a driver for large-scale restructurings in the tech market.
What the Wix CEO announced publicly
On May 28, Abrahami confirmed that Wix would lay off around 1,000 employees, approximately 20% of its global staff. According to public data, the company had just over 5,200 employees, and more than 60% of them were based in Israel. That’s exactly where the exchange-rate issue hits hard.
Instead of informing only regulators and employees about the cuts, the CEO decided to publish the message in full on his X and LinkedIn profiles, at the same time the text reached internal teams. That choice sent a clear signal: the situation was not just a one-off adjustment, but a meaningful change of course for the company.
The tone of the statement mixed emotion with a cold business analysis. Abrahami described the day as painful, but then moved straight into a concrete explanation of the causes. According to reports from outlets like Globes and The Next Web, the text detailed how the strong local currency was weighing on the company’s costs and the competitive pressure coming from artificial intelligence, which is forcing a deep review of Wix’s operating model.
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Strong shekel, revenue in dollars, and a bottom line that stopped adding up
One of the central points in the message was the surge of the Israeli shekel. In a recent period, the currency appreciated more than 20% against the dollar, reaching its highest level in over three decades, according to analyses cited by the international press. For a company like Wix, which:
- pays a large share of its costs in shekels (salaries, benefits, infrastructure in Israel), and
- earns most of its revenue in dollars, selling services globally,
that appreciation becomes a structural problem. The CEO himself summed up the situation by saying that a very significant part of costs is denominated in shekels, while revenue is largely in dollars. In practice, when the shekel strengthens, every dollar received buys fewer local currency units, which pushes the real cost of operations up, even if the company does not raise salaries or grow the team.
The Manufacturers’ Association of Israel even pointed out that the layoffs at Wix also partly reflected the lack of coordinated action by the government and central bank regarding the shekel’s appreciation. In other words, the macroeconomic scenario started to directly affect the spreadsheets of a software company that, by nature, had always been seen as less exposed to currency swings than physical industries, for example.
With more than 60% of its team in Israel, any upward move in the local currency amplifies the impact on costs. A cut of around one-fifth of the staff, then, does not look like a minor adjustment, but rather an attempt to reposition the company’s expense base at a new level, in a context where margins are being squeezed month by month by the combination of a strong currency and rising competition.
AI as a historic force: the other blade of the scissors
If the exchange rate explains an important part of the problem, the other half of the story is artificial intelligence. And here, Abrahami did not treat the topic as a fad or just another new technology. He stated that the company is going through the most significant change in how companies are built since the creation of modern programming languages in the 1970s.
In the CEO’s view, it is not just about adopting new internal tools, but about reprogramming the company from the inside:
- how it is built;
- how it thinks about its products;
- how it is managed;
- how it operates day to day.
This reading goes far beyond an innovation pitch to please investors. It positions AI as a central driver of restructuring, which inevitably includes decisions about the size and profile of the team.
In recent years, website builders and digital platforms have started competing with solutions that use generative AI to create nearly complete pages from just a few natural-language prompts. Text, images, navigation structure, and even basic search optimization can come out almost ready, with minimal user intervention. That leap hits directly at Wix’s core, which has always positioned itself as a simple and visual way to build code-free websites.
With AI, the expected level of simplicity shifts again. Now, users want to:
- describe what they need in a few sentences;
- get a full website automatically suggested;
- have content already optimized for SEO;
- see integrations with online stores, bookings, and social media practically configured on their own.
To deliver that, the company needs to invest heavily in research, model development, AI API orchestration, and product flow redesign. That is where the CEO’s comments become even clearer: by saying it is not just about using new tools but about rebuilding the company’s structure, he is acknowledging that AI will change not only the final product, but also who is part of the company and how work is organized.
Fewer layers, more speed: why the CEO says there was no alternative
In the most direct part of the statement, Abrahami says that Wix needs to become a faster, leaner, and flatter organization. In other words, fewer management layers, fewer steps between decision-makers and doers, and a smaller team that is more focused on the areas considered strategic for the company’s next phase.
The justification combines three fronts:
- Currency pressure: local costs climbing while revenue in dollars is not keeping pace.
- AI transformation: the need to invest now in new capabilities, at the risk of falling behind in a fast-changing market.
- Intense competition: other tech players, from giants to startups, moving aggressively to embed AI at every point of the user journey.
In this context, the CEO argues that keeping the old structure would mean being too slow to react, precisely at a time when competitive advantage lies in the ability to iterate quickly, test new AI features, adjust the product based on usage data, and learn in short cycles.
The idea of making the organization flatter also aligns with what many tech companies have been doing alongside major cuts: reducing layers of hierarchy to speed up decisions, empower smaller teams, and, at the same time, control costs. In practice, that almost always means significant cuts in middle-management roles and a reorganization of multidisciplinary product and engineering teams.
Wix is not alone: AI and layoffs at big tech companies
The Wix case is not an isolated one. The statement itself and the analyses that followed reminded readers that major players such as Microsoft, Meta, and Uber have already publicly linked staff reduction plans to advances in artificial intelligence. At different levels, these companies argue that:
- intelligent automation allows them to do more with fewer people in some areas;
- new investments need to be directed to teams specialized in AI, data, and infrastructure;
- heavy structures make it harder to respond at the speed the market now demands.
Wix joins this list as a strong example in the world of website-building and digital-presence tools. By making the relationship between AI, exchange rates, and layoffs public, the CEO offers a concrete case of how emerging technologies and macroeconomic factors combine to force tough decisions.
Curiously, while the U.S. Federal Reserve has been signaling that AI still should not cause mass layoffs across the economy as a whole, tech companies continue to make significant cuts, citing artificial intelligence as a strategic justification. The gap between these two narratives shows how the impact of AI is uneven: it appears first, and more strongly, in highly digital sectors such as Wix’s own market.
The message between the lines for the tech sector
Beyond the numbers and rational explanation, the format of Abrahami’s message also stands out. By publishing the full text on open channels, he:
- speaks directly to employees, users, investors, and the broader market at the same time;
- openly acknowledges that the current model needed to change;
- positions Wix as a company willing to make unpopular decisions to adapt.
For those watching the sector, the message is clear: the combination of a strong currency, pressure for results, and the AI revolution is likely to keep driving cuts and deep restructurings. The difference now is that part of these discussions has stopped being exclusively internal and has moved into the public arena, on the same timeline where customers and developers comment on new features.
In Wix’s specific case, the layoffs affecting around 20% of its workforce, tied to the need to invest in artificial intelligence and the rise of the shekel, show how even established companies with strong brands and a global customer base are vulnerable to rapid shifts in the economic and technological landscape. And they reinforce a trend that has been emerging at other giants: from now on, reorganizing teams, rethinking structures, and repositioning products around AI will stop being the exception and will increasingly become part of tech companies’ everyday reality.
