Patreon is laying off 20 percent of workers
Patreon CEO Jack Conte doesn’t believe ‘AI replaces humans,’ but says the technology has ‘fundamentally transformed the tech industry.’
Patreon CEO Jack Conte doesn’t believe ‘AI replaces humans,’ but says the technology has ‘fundamentally transformed the tech industry.’
by Emma Roth
Jul 23, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC
Image: The Verge
Emma Roth
is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
Patreon is laying off 20 percent of its workers, or around 93 employees, as reported earlier by 404 Media. In a memo to employees, Patreon CEO Jack Conte writes that the company isn’t making these changes “because we believe AI replaces humans,” but says AI has “fundamentally transformed the tech industry, including how we work, how we build products, how we communicate, and more.”
That shift has changed “how we operate and organize,” Conte writes.
During an interview on Decoder, last month, Conte laid out his stance on AI, saying that the company is “100 percent embracing” AI tools internally to continue serving creators:
If Patreon does not fully embrace these tools as a product and engineering company — and we are ultimately a product and engineering company — and use them to give the power back to creators, we, as a company, will be dead in three years.
Patreon previously laid off 17 percent of workers in 2022, as well as closed its offices in Dublin and Berlin.
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- Emma Roth
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