Why Block’s COO is tracking ‘gross profit per employee’—and how AI is on track to double it to $2 million

When the fintech Block recently announced it was cutting nearly half its workforce, many questioned whether it was another tech company cleaning up a pandemic-era hiring binge. But CFO and COO Amrita Ahuja offered a data point to consider. 

Block generated roughly $500,000 in gross profit per employee in 2019—a figure that barely budged even as headcount ballooned from a few thousand to around 13,000 during the hyper-growth years, Ahuja noted in a recent interview with Fortune. Then something changed.