Dropbox is laying off employees to free up more resources for AI development. 500 employees must have it.

CEO Drew Houston announced the bad news in a statement on the website. Dropbox will lay off 16 percent of its total workforce. At first, the CEO refers to the economic crisis that is putting the company under pressure, but the real reason soon becomes clear. Dropbox doesn’t want to miss the AI ​​train, but developing and training artificial intelligence costs money.

According to Houston, Dropbox has long wanted to do something with AI, but thanks to OpenAI breakthroughs, the path is now completely open for the company. The CEO doesn’t go into great detail on how Dropbox plans to implement AI in the cloud storage service. AI functions could be developed for organizing the calendar or creating to-do lists, among other things.

To develop these features, Dropbox now needs software developers. Therefore, employees leave other positions to free up space and resources. Houston pledges that all affected workers will be paid for at least 16 weeks and receive hospitalization and other medical benefits for an additional six months. Employees are allowed to keep their tools as a parting gift for personal use.

In addition to layoffs, Dropbox is also announcing changes to its organizational structure. Certain investments will also be scaled back to focus all resources on AI development. In addition, the announcement does not go into detail on this either. Opponents of AI fear that artificial intelligence will cost many people their jobs. That fear has become very real for Dropbox employees.