'Shut The F*** Up': Chamath Palihapitiya Slams Cloudflare CEO Over Memo After 1,000 AI Layoffs

Cloudflare laid off more than 1,000 employees globally on 7 May, with the company apparently transitioning to artificial intelligence. In a blog post authored by company CEO Matthew Prince, it was detailed how the reliance on AI over the last three months was necessary to ensure quality service was delivered to their customers.

The decision, as detailed in the post, appeared heartfelt. However, there were some who believed that it was horrendous. One of them was venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, branding the message as something that came out of the 'PR school of retards.'

'You could have not written a worse memo. It's like you reduce humans to a label called the measurers and then you're like I'm laying off all the measurers,' Chamath opined when he spoke on the All-In podcast.

Origin of the 'Measurers' Label

Chamath's reaction stemmed from the words of Prince himself in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that was published recently. In that piece, he defined measurers as the people who were in middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition, according to a report by Fortune.

'The vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers,' Prince said in that article.

As far as the Canadian-American entrepreneur is concerned, Prince should have been more aware and mindful of how those words would impact laid-off workers. He feels the label is an added burden for employees, robbing them of some dignity when they go out and look for new jobs.

'There's enough of these tech CEOs that are now public. You can hear them, you can understand them. They're really good at one thing and not necessarily good at other things,' Chamath pointed out. 'So I would say, "Shut the f*** up. Get behind the keyboard. Just do your job. And if you need to manage something, just manage it. Don't write these missives. You are terrible at it,"' he added.

Chamath Calls for Accountability

Chamath is aware that losing a job and finding new work is difficult, especially in this day and age of AI. Hence, he feels that while there are some who need to face this hard reality, the last thing they need is to leave with a dubious label on their heads.

The Social Capital founder believes that the Cloudflare memo was written more like a marketing tool to justify the decision to axe employees in favour of AI. He believes that executives can do better when layoffs are made and instead resort to means to help workers find new work rather than worry about the credibility of the company.

'The reality is that if this is the way you're going to message something as critical as this, I think you did a horrible job. Now you label these people and you put a scarlet letter on their backs. So now when they try to get a different job, they're like, 'Oh, you're one of the Cloudflare measurers?' How does that help anybody?' Chamath said.

Curiously, Cloudflare was performing well before the decision to lay off workers and embrace AI came out. In fact, the company reported $639.8 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2026. The figures represented a 34% year-on-year increase. Aside from that, there was also $73.1 million in adjusted (non-GAAP) operating income, clearly revealing significant numbers beyond Wall Street expectations, according to CNBC.

However, Prince was likely joining the AI-shift bandwagon, aware that higher revenue could come with AI integration. Companies such as Amazon and Meta have done just that, using the saved allocated revenue to invest in AI.

But as mentioned in a previous post, it does not necessarily follow that investing in AI would translate to better revenue. The initial investments in AI are just the start, and enhancements a company would want would signal new expenses over the horizon.

This nullifies the belief that AI investment is a fixed-cost saving. The fact is that artificial intelligence performs expected tasks depending on how it is programmed. Hence, the savings that organisations originally projected may not hold up after all, although this depends on the expenses associated with creating the right AI model suited to take over the work of laid-off employees.