Patreon’s revenue is up 28%, so why is it cutting 20% of its staff?

Patreon is laying off 93 employees. That is 20% of its total workforce. CEO Jack Conte announced the decision on Thursday in a message sent to staff and creators.

Conte shared the news in a note titled “A Painful Update about our Team.” He posted it publicly on the platform and sent a version to employees as well. In the note, he said the company’s core business remains strong. He described this year’s market shifts as significant and said Patreon needed to adjust how it operates to stay stable for creators going forward.

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He also said the decision was his responsibility. He called it a hard day for the company and acknowledged the pain it would cause for employees.

Severance and support

Workers affected by the layoffs will get at least 16 weeks of severance pay. They will also get one extra week of pay for every year they worked at the company. Patreon will cover healthcare costs through the end of the year. It is also giving each affected employee a $1,500 stipend to replace their work laptop.

Restructuring the org chart

Beyond the layoffs, Patreon is changing how its teams are organized. Conte said the company is flattening its management structure. Teams will be refocused around a smaller set of top priorities. The goal appears to be a leaner company that can move faster with fewer layers of management.

The AI question

Many companies point to artificial intelligence when cutting jobs. Conte addressed this directly. He said AI has changed the tech industry in a real way. He admitted it affects how Patreon builds products and communicates internally.

But he pushed back on the idea that AI tools caused these specific job cuts. He said the more his team has used these tools, the more they have seen their limits. He argued that AI cannot replace the creativity, judgment, and care that human employees bring to their work. He also said it cannot replace the human connection that people value.

A bigger pattern for Patreon

This is not the first time Patreon has made deep cuts. Back in 2022, the company laid off 80 employees. That was about 17% of its staff at the time. That round also affected the team that worked directly with creator partnerships.

The current round of cuts is larger than the 2022 layoffs, both in raw numbers and in percentage of the workforce. It marks the biggest single reduction in the company’s history.

Recent moves before the layoffs

The layoffs come shortly after another notable announcement from Patreon. Last week, the company said it was working with Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure provider. The partnership is meant to block AI bots from scraping content on the platform without permission.

Patreon said this step was necessary because AI scraping tools have grown more advanced. This fits into a wider fight between online creators and AI companies. Many publishers and creators worry that their work is being used to train AI models without consent or payment.

Conte has spoken about this tension before. He has said publicly that he feels both amazed and angry about AI. As a creator himself, he has argued that creators deserve payment when their work contributes to training AI systems.

Business performance numbers

Despite the layoffs, Patreon’s business numbers appear solid. The platform hosts more than 300,000 creators. It generated estimated $179 million in revenue in 2025. That marked 28% increase from year before.

Podcasters specifically earned $629 million through the platform in 2025. That was a 33% jump and made podcasting the platform’s fastest growing content category.