Israel-based Wix joins a growing list of companies announcing layoffs citing “the fast evolution” of AI. (That list includes Meta, Cisco, Groupon, and Intuit, in just the last few weeks.)
It also said a weak dollar, creating a poor exchange rate with the Israeli shekel, was to blame.
Wix, a website builder, said Thursday that it’s laying off roughly 20% of its workforce, in a post from CEO Avishai Abrahami on X and LinkedIn. (That’s about 1,000 people, according to CNBC, which reported that Wix had 5,277 employees as of May.)
“We have witnessed the most significant shift in how companies are built since the invention of modern programming languages in the 1970s,” the post said. “This is not just about adopting new tools – it is about rewiring how companies are built, how they think, how they manage and how they operate. Companies that embrace this change will not only build faster; they will build things the previous generation literally could not have imagined.”
Abrahami also cited the poor exchange rate between the Israel shekel to the U.S. dollar. The Israeli currency has significantly strengthened in the past few quarters against a weakening dollar, and the shekel is up nearly 30% against the greenback over the last year.
“As the majority of our teams are Israel-based, a very meaningful portion of our costs are shekel-denominated, while our revenue is largely dollar-denominated,” Abrahami explained on X. “This creates a structural pressure on our ability to operate at our current scale. It is a reality that directly shapes what is sustainable for our company.”
Shares of Wix.com Ltd. (Nasdaq: WIX) were up less than 1% in midday trading on Thursday at the time of this writing.
Wix went public in 2013 with a high-profile public offering, but has struggled in more recent years. Since the beginning of 2026, its shares have slid nearly 50% on the Nasdaq exchange, Reuters reported.
Wix reported poor first quarter 2026 earnings on May 13, missing analyst estimates by a considerable mark on revenue, adjusted earnings per share (EPS), and operating income.
Revenue came in at $541.2 million, falling short of the expected $543.6 million, while the adjusted EPS of $0.68 missed expectations of $1.22, off by 44.2%. Operating margin was in the red at -12.9%, down from 7.9% in the same quarter last year.