Wix Layoffs 2026: 1,000 Jobs Cut as AI Takes Over

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Wix is cutting around 1,000 jobs in the biggest round of layoffs in the company's history. 

The reason? AI is now doing work that people used to do.

Wix to Cut 20% of the Workforce

Wix employed 5,277 people at the end of the first quarter of 2026, with more than 60% of them based in Israel. Around 1,000 of those jobs are now going away over the coming months. That would be about 20% of their total staff.

Management has told employees directly that advances in AI have reduced the need for human workers across development and design roles.

Financially, the first quarter of 2026 was rough. Wix posted a net loss of $57.5 million, despite revenue growing 14% year-on-year to $541 million. Revenue is going up, but the losses are going up faster. 

The layoffs at Wix are almost certainly not the end of the story. The company has been redefining developer roles so that engineers oversee entire development processes end-to-end, adapting to AI-assisted workflows. 

That's a significant change to how software development teams are structured, and it implies fewer specialists and more generalists who lean on AI tools.

How is AI behind all this?

To understand why this is happening, you need to understand what Wix has been doing for the past year.

Wix acquired Israeli AI startup Base44 for $80 million, a platform that lets users build software with vibe coding. The company also purchased another AI startup called Hour One to strengthen its generative AI capabilities.

Base44 has been a genuine success. Its annual recurring revenue hit $150 million in May 2026, well ahead of internal targets.

But success in AI comes with a heavy price tag. 

Running AI models requires enormous computing power, and the costs are climbing. Wix also had to make additional payments to Base44's founder, Maor Shlomo, as the platform hit its revenue milestones.

In short, Wix is spending aggressively to win the AI race while simultaneously watching its profitability disappear. 

The layoffs are the company's attempt to get the costs back under control.

And Wix had to go all-in on AI. Their business model came into question with the growing popularity of AI-powered coding assistants, which raised concerns that businesses and individuals may no longer rely on platforms like Wix to create websites.

These fears intensified as AI systems became capable of building websites, generating designs, writing content, and even managing e-commerce functionality with minimal human input. 

But AI may not be the sole reason behind the layoffs.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has suggested that some companies may be using AI as a convenient narrative for job cuts that would have happened anyway, regardless of automation. He called it AI Washing.

It's a reasonable point in this case, too. Wix was already considered relatively over-staffed compared to its peers, and the financial pressure from the Base44 acquisition added urgency to a restructuring that was probably overdue.

Bottom Line

Wix is considered one of the anchors of the Israeli tech industry. Analysts note that its move could push other Israeli companies to carry out layoffs they have already been considering internally. 

In other words, Wix going first removes a psychological barrier for everyone else.

And the pressure isn't limited to Israel. 

Just last weekend, Meta laid off approximately 8,000 employees, while American software company Intuit cut 3,000 jobs, representing 17% of its workforce. These are not isolated events. They are part of a pattern.

The central fear in the industry is that if AI can do an increasing share of the work in programming, marketing, operations, and customer support, why do tech companies need as many employees as they hired during the boom years?