Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong fired engineers who refused to use AI assistants

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has admitted to firing engineers who refused to use AI coding assistants, after the company rolled out enterprise licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor.

Speaking on Stripe co-founder John Collison’s podcast Cheeky Pint this week, Armstrong described how some employees resisted onboarding the tools, despite company-wide access being provided.

“I went rogue,” Armstrong said, recalling his surprise when told adoption might be slow. He posted a message in Coinbase’s main engineering Slack channel, making it mandatory for all engineers to sign up for AI assistants by the end of the week. “AI is 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.”

At the meeting, Armstrong said some engineers had valid reasons for delays, such as being on vacation, but others did not. “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 [have a good reason]. And they got fired.”

Armstrong admitted the approach was “heavy-handed” and acknowledged not everyone at the company agreed with the decision. However, he argued the move sent a clear message that AI adoption was non-negotiable.

Since then, Coinbase has leaned further into AI training. Armstrong said the company now holds monthly sessions where teams share innovative ways they are using AI.

Collison also questioned the risks of relying too heavily on AI-generated code. “It’s clear that it is very helpful to have AI helping you write code. It’s not clear how you run an AI-coded code base,” he said. Armstrong responded: “I agree.”