Wix to lay off 1,000 employees in biggest job cut in company history as AI pressure mounts

Wix is preparing to lay off about 1,000 employees, roughly 20% of its workforce, in the largest round of job cuts in the company's history. The Israeli website-building firm is moving ahead with the downsizing after a brutal first quarter, with its stock down nearly 50% since January and many internal roles looking increasingly redundant in the AI era, CTech reported. The company employed 5,277 people at the end of Q1, with more than 60% based in Israel. Wix declined to comment.The cuts come even as revenue climbs. Wix posted a 14% jump to $541 million last quarter, but slid back into the red with a $57.5 million net loss. Cash flow dropped 21% to $112 million. Operating expenses ballooned 50% to $423 million, eating up 35% of revenue compared to 21% a year earlier.Earlier moves now look like warning signs. Per CTech, Wix demanded full-time office attendance a few months ago, drawing visible pushback from staff, and trimmed only 63 people in Q1. A $1.6 billion buyback in March drained cash reserves down to $900 million without lifting the stock, leaving the company valued at roughly $2 billion.Base44, the natural-language coding platform founded by Maor Shlomo, has been Wix's rare bright spot. Its annual recurring revenue hit $150 million in May, beating internal targets and triggering a fresh $38 million payout to Shlomo last quarter, with more expected this year. Wix even aired two Super Bowl spots this year, one for its core product and another for Base44.But the boom is expensive. Vibe coding burns through compute, and Wix is also funding its own AI model to power Harmony, its website-building assistant. CEO Avishai Abrahami has framed the in-house model as a long-term play to pull inference costs down. For now, every department is bracing for the cuts.