Bolt cut roughly 30% of its workforce earlier this year as CEO Ryan Breslow moved to reshape the fintech firm into a leaner, AI-focused operation. In an internal Slack message, Breslow said the company would be “operating as a much leaner organization and leveraging AI at our core,” framing the layoffs as part of a broader strategic reset.
Speaking at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit, Breslow said he had eliminated the company’s HR team entirely, arguing that HR had been a source of internal problems. “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” he said. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.” He also described removing nearly the entire leadership team during the reshuffle.
Breslow pointed to a sharp decline in Bolt’s valuation as context for the overhaul: company figures he cited show valuation fell from $11 billion in 2022 to about $300 million by 2024. He originally stepped down as CEO in 2022 and returned to lead the company in 2025, presenting the current changes as part of his effort to reset and stabilize the business.
Breslow defended the firings as a response to what he characterized as entitlement and underperformance inside the company. “There’s a sense of entitlement that had festered across the company…most of those people just had to be let go,” he said. The shift toward a smaller headcount and AI-centric operations signals a significant change for remaining staff and for how Bolt will handle HR and leadership going forward.
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