It was posted on X (the former Twitter). It was sent simultaneously to every employee. It was one of the most direct public explanations a tech CEO has given for cutting a fifth of their workforce.
What Wix (WIX) CEO Avishai Abrahami wrote about AI, the Israeli shekel, and the future of his company is not the kind of memo that gets buried in an internal inbox.
What Abrahami said about Wix layoffs and how he said it
Abrahami confirmed on May 28 that Wix is cutting roughly 1,000 employees. This is approximately 20% of its global workforce and the largest round of layoffs in the company’s history.
He did not quietly file the news with regulators. He posted the full message on X and LinkedIn at the same time it reached staff.
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“Today is a sad day for me,” he wrote. “We have made a very hard decision.”
The candor extended beyond the emotional framing. Abrahami named two specific causes and gave the business logic behind each one, according to Globes.
The two forces Abrahami says left Wix no choice but to cut jobs
The first is currency. The Israeli shekel has gained more than 20% against the U.S. dollar over the past 12 months, rising roughly 14% in 2025 and another 7% in the first five months of 2026, hitting a 33-year high, The Next Web noted.
Wix employs 5,277 people, with more than 60% based in Israel. It earns the vast majority of its revenue in U.S. dollars.
The combination is a structural cost problem that compounds with every further appreciation of the shekel. “A very meaningful portion of our costs are shekel-denominated, while our revenue is largely dollar-denominated,” Abrahami wrote.
Israel’s Manufacturers’ Association said the Wix layoffs were driven in part by government and central bank inaction on the shekel, according to The Next Web.
The second force is AI. Abrahami did not use it as a vague buzzword. He made a specific historical claim.
“We have witnessed the most significant shift in how companies are built since the invention of modern programming languages in the 1970s,” he wrote.
“This is not just about adopting new tools. It is about rewiring how companies are built, how they think, how they manage and how they operate.”
Kauzlarich/Getty Images
Why Abrahami said Wix had no alternative
The memo did not leave room for interpretation on the direction. “We need to become a faster, leaner, and flatter organization,” Abrahami wrote. He said the company was moving toward fewer layers of leadership to make faster decisions.
He also addressed the stakes directly. “We choose to compete,” he wrote. “If we do not make this change, we will be failing in our responsibility.” That responsibility, he specified, extends beyond employees to Wix’s users and shareholders, noting that behind each shareholder are the savings and pensions of private individuals.
Affected employees will receive what Abrahami described as personally curated separation packages. They will be contacted individually.
Key figures on the Wix restructuring:
- Scale: Approximately 1,000 employees cut, roughly 20% of global workforce; largest layoff in Wix history; headcount reduces from 5,277 to approximately 4,200.
- Workforce profile: More than 60% of Wix’s 5,277 employees are Israel-based; revenue is largely dollar-denominated, while the majority of costs are shekel-denominated.
- Currency impact: Israeli shekel up more than 20% against the dollar over 12 months; up roughly 14% in 2025 and 7% in first five months of 2026; hit a 33-year high.
- Stock performance: WIX shares down nearly 50% in 2026; Wix posted a first-quarter loss ahead of the announcement.
- Broader wave: Wix joins Rapyd, Amdocs, and AI21 Labs in a series of Israeli tech workforce reductions in 2026.
- AI framing: Abrahami described AI as “the most significant shift in how companies are built since the invention of modern programming languages in the 1970s.”
Source: Wix CEO Avishai Abrahami’s May 28 X post
What the Wix layoffs reveal about how AI is reshaping tech companies
Wix is not a struggling startup. It is a scaled, globally recognized platform with millions of business users. When a company at that level publicly attributes a 20% workforce cut to AI-driven restructuring alongside a macro currency shock, it signals something about where the industry is headed.
Abrahami is making the argument that AI is not just changing what products Wix can build. It is changing how many people are needed to build them.
Fewer management layers. Faster decision-making. A smaller team that can operate more effectively because the tools have fundamentally changed.
These arguments are becoming familiar. Microsoft, Meta, Uber, and now Wix have all publicly linked workforce reductions to AI in recent months.
The difference in Abrahami’s memo is the specificity. He called it the biggest structural shift in software since the 1970s, not a routine efficiency exercise.
He said the company has no choice. And he posted it publicly so no one could miss it.
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