Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has disclosed that he dismissed engineers who declined to adopt AI coding tools, shortly after the crypto exchange acquired enterprise licences for GitHub Copilot and Cursor.
Speaking about the company’s commitment to AI, Armstrong said, “We’re leaning as hard as we can into AI.”
The company has also imposed a strict one-week deadline for employees to learn AI tools. Direct oversight from the CEO was made mandatory for those who failed to comply, underlining how strongly Coinbase is pushing AI adoption within its development teams.
No AI, no job
Armstrong instructed his team to begin using AI tools within one week.
“Originally they were coming back and saying, ‘All right, over the next quarter… we’re going to get to 50% (AI adoption).’ I said, ‘You’re telling me—why can’t every engineer just onboard by the end of the week?’”
He then shared a message in the company’s all-hands Slack channel, setting a clear ultimatum: “AI’s important. We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it and I’d like to meet with you to understand why.”
The Saturday meeting with Armstrong turned into a career-defining moment for many. “I jumped on this call on Saturday, and there were a couple people that had not done it. Some of them had a good reason, because they were just getting back from some trip or something, and some of them didn’t, and they got fired.”
Acknowledging the strictness of his decision, Armstrong said, “Some people really didn’t like it, by the way, that heavy-handed approach, but I think it did set some clarity at least that we need to lean into this and learn about it.”
How Coinbase is using AI
Armstrong revealed that as a result of the AI mandate, “33% of code was now written by AI” at Coinbase. He also set a target of achieving 50% AI-written code by the end of the quarter.
To maintain standards while boosting AI use, Coinbase conducts monthly “AI Speed Runs” in which one engineer volunteers to run a training session on their AI usage. Armstrong explained, “We try to cherry-pick the people, the teams that are doing it the best.”
He also stressed the need for human oversight to avoid risks, especially given Coinbase’s financial responsibilities.
“You don’t want people wide coding these systems moving money. We’ve really encouraged people to really, you have to code review it and have the appropriate checks in place on that from with humans in the loop.”
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