Squarespace Cuts 300 Jobs as AI Upends the Website-Building Market

By Olivia Hart

Squarespace is cutting roughly 300 employees, about 19% of its global workforce, as the website-building industry absorbs the shock of generative AI. Jeff Seedman, a public relations specialist representing Squarespace, confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch; The Verge first reported the story.

"Squarespace is restructuring its organization and reducing its global workforce by approximately 19%, representing around 300 employees," Seedman said. "The changes are intended to simplify how we operate, sharpen our priorities and enable the company to move faster as we position Squarespace for its next phase of growth."

The framing is standard restructuring language. What Seedman did not say is which teams the cuts will hit, how many roles sit outside the United States, or what severance the affected employees will receive. Roughly one in five colleagues gone means the surviving organization will do its work with a fifth less capacity — "next phase of growth" is a promise, not a plan on the record.

Why is a two-decade-old web host suddenly shrinking?

Website building has changed immensely over the last few years as a result of the generative AI boom. So-called "vibe-coding" website builders, which require only simple prompts from users to spin up functional frontend designs, have largely upended the industry. Users can now create sites with significantly less effort than Squarespace's template-and-drag model demanded.

The money flowing into that segment shows how real the shift is:

• Rival web host Wix bought the AI app builder Base44 last year for $80 million.
• Lovable, a similar prompt-to-app offering, raised a $400 million Series C round in August at a $13.3 billion valuation.
• Google recently launched Stitch, a feature that lets users swiftly generate user interface designs.

That competitive math is stark: Lovable's single funding round is worth nearly twice the $7 billion at which Squarespace itself was taken private. A company that once defined easy website creation now competes against tools that skip the builder entirely.

What is Squarespace's own AI answer?

Squarespace has begun a big push into AI. In 2024, the company launched Blueprint, an AI website-building tool. It also recently announced Forma, an upcoming AI-native platform for which users can currently join a waitlist.

Both moves are real, but neither is a proven counterweight. Blueprint has been on the market for roughly a year, and the company has not disclosed adoption figures. Forma has no public launch date. In other words, the layoffs arrive before Squarespace has shown AI products capable of replacing the revenue tied to its traditional builder.

From $10 Billion IPO to $7 Billion Buyout

The corporate backdrop matters here. Squarespace was founded in 2004 and went public in 2021 at a $10 billion valuation. The company then struggled to generate enthusiastic public market interest in the ensuing years. It ultimately went private again through a $7 billion private equity deal in 2024 — a 30% markdown from its IPO-era worth.

A company already under private equity ownership faces its own pressure to cut costs. The restructuring may reflect AI competition, leveraged-ownership arithmetic, or both; the company's statement attributes it to speed and simplification.

The takeaway in plain words: Squarespace is betting that a leaner organization plus two unproven AI products can hold off rivals worth more on paper than it is — and the 300 people losing their jobs are the first stake in that bet.