PayPal says it’s ‘becoming a technology company again.’ This means AI.

PayPal is looking to the future, despite its falling stock and looming layoffs. In his first-quarter earnings call, CEO Enrique Lores told investors that PayPal needs to “recommit to our core values,” which include “being a technology company again.”

There was no need to read between the lines – PayPal was investing in powerful AI conversions.

Lores made it clear, telling analysts on a call this week that leading companies are finding ways to differentiate themselves and innovate, and now is the time for PayPal to step up. That includes revamping its technology platform, moving quickly to become “cloud native,” and “strongly adopting AI in our development processes,” Lores said. This would increase developer productivity and shorten time to market, he added.

It’s a surprising admission from PayPal that they haven’t yet embraced AI in-house, while AI-assisted coding is one of the areas where the technology has made great strides.

Other consumer technology companies have quickly adopted AI in recent months to help with writing, with Spotify announcing in February that its top developers. he didn’t write a line of code since December. Meanwhile, the top dev teams are trying to win on tokenmaxxing – a representative to understand who in the company is testing AI most often, based on the number of AI indicators they use.

PayPal is just getting started, it seems.

Lores said the company has launched a new “AI transformation and simplification” team to help with its AI projects. Combined with the planned divestment, which Lores identified as PayPal removing parts of its organization, the addition of AI-supported processes is expected to bring the company at least $1.5 billion in revenue over the next two to three years, he said.

The company made the announcement last week to rebuild his businesswhich supports the service into three areas: outgoing solutions with PayPal, consumer financial services (with Venmo) and payment services with crypto. In addition, Bloomberg said On Tuesday, PayPal plans to cut about 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years as part of its cost-savings plan, equivalent to north of 4,500 jobs.

More savings will come from PayPal’s plans to adopt AI, industry insiders said on the call. This includes bringing AI into areas beyond writing, such as customer service, support services, and risk management, to name a few.

“I think the changes that AI will help us do and drive — they’re going to be very important,” Lores said. “This is why we created a group last week, I told you, which will be in charge of driving – working with tasks, processes and procedures – this AI change. And this is not about adopting AI as a technology, where we have done many pilots in the company, and we have seen what is possible. It is about understanding how to reorganize the main processes …

Announcing an AI-driven push to cut costs and cut thousands of jobs confirms the biggest criticism of technology — it comes with a human cost.

It is worth noting that, at this point, PayPal was already in need of reform. The company may have beat its first quarter earnings with revenue of $8.4 billion, up 7% year-over-year, but it forecast weak guidance for the second quarter, shipping fall after payment. This follows a long post-pandemic decline in shipping stock 80% off from 2021 above and has hindered the growth of PayPal.

When asked if separating Venmo into its own business meant the company would be open to a sale, Lores said that, at this point, that was what made the most sense for the transition plan. However, he expressed his openness to futures contracts by saying that “my first priority is to maximize shareholder value,” in response to a question from a stock analyst.