80% of their revenue—gone in months. Not years. Months.
Last week, Tailwind CSS laid off 75% of their engineering team. People are calling it the first true casualty of AI. They’re wrong, it’s not the first. But it is the first one we can’t explain away with “restructuring” or “market conditions.”
This is a warning shot. And if you’re not asking hard questions about your own business model right now, you’re already behind.
Here’s the TLDR on Tailwind: Tailwind CSS is a coding abstraction tool that makes it easier for someone writing code to get the website to look the way they want it to.
That someone used to be people, and occasionally people needed help or didn’t want to code everything from scratch. So Tailwind, the company, made money by offering consulting services and templates/starter kits.
People are no longer writing code, AI is, and AI does not need to hire Tailwind to do consulting or buy a starter kit. It just makes it for you.
Because of this Tailwind has lost 80% of its revenue in just a couple months and was forced to lay off most of its team.
There will be more and they will get more frequent. You need to take a hard look at how you and/or your business makes money. If you’re in a decision-making position this is on you, call the meeting, rally the troops.
If you don’t get a say in the big decisions, ask the questions anyway. Be the catalyst. Either you were the one who got the ball rolling that saved the company, or management ignores you and you get to start job hunting while still employed.
Warning shots give you a chance to react before the kill shot. Start asking the hard business model questions today.