Micha Kaufman
CEO of Fiverr
Fiverr’s founder-CEO, whose viral 2025 memo warned every employee — himself included — that “AI is coming for your jobs,” months before he cut roughly 30% of the workforce to rebuild Fiverr as an “AI-first” company.
Why this score
How the formula works →- +3.8proMandates AI use when hiring
- +2.9proUses AI in their work
- +1.8pro4 pro-AI statements (forceful)
Weights, statement counts, the ×1.25 multiplier for having a stake in an AI-impacted field, and the formula’s smoothing are already baked in — the points add up to the score: Strongly Pro-AI · 8.5/10
In his words
In a utopian world, I’d want every one of our employees, and also every freelancer on our platform, to use automation and technology to replace 100% of what they currently do.
AI is coming for your jobs. Heck, it’s coming for my job too. This is a wake-up call.
This transformation requires a painful reset, and as we make it, we will be parting ways with approximately 250 team members across different departments.
Biography
Micha Kaufman is an Israeli entrepreneur who co-founded Fiverr in 2010 with Shai Wininger, turning five-dollar gigs into a public marketplace that connects millions of freelancers with buyers worldwide. That business model put him on both sides of the AI upheaval at once: the freelance work Fiverr sells is exactly the kind generative AI threatens to automate.
The wake-up call
In April 2025 Kaufman sent employees a memo so blunt it went viral: AI was coming for everyone’s job, including his own, and it did not matter whether you were a programmer, designer, lawyer, or salesperson. Staff who failed to master the tools of their trade would, he warned, “face the need for a career change in a matter of months.” Unlike most AI-mandate memos, Kaufman published his willingly and defended it as honesty rather than threat.
Five months later the other shoe dropped: in September 2025 Fiverr cut about 250 people — roughly 30% of the company — to become what Kaufman called an “AI-first” organization, leaner, with fewer management layers and infrastructure built around AI. Critics, including former staff, accused him of telling employees to upskill and then cutting them anyway; Kaufman argued the reset was survival, telling Fortune later, “Don’t be a cheerleader. If you’re not practicing, don’t preach.” The episode sits alongside Tobi Lütke’s Shopify memo as a defining document of the AI-first management wave.
Quote sources
- Company memo, 2025(itpro.com)
- CTech, 2025(calcalistech.com)
Sources & further reading
- ITPro: Fiverr’s CEO told staff to upskill in AI — then cut 30% of the workforce (2025)
- CTech: Fiverr cuts 250 jobs as CEO declares shift to AI-first strategy (2025)
- Fortune: The AI era has a message for every CEO — adapt or die (2026)
- CTech: AI is coming for your job — but that’s a good thing, says Fiverr CEO (2025)
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/micha-kaufman
