As wave after wave of layoffs crash over Bay Area companies and the wider tech industry, questions swirl about the causes of the cuts. Now, at least one answer is becoming clearer: Executives want fatter pockets for investing in artificial intelligence.

In an interview on the Verge’s “Decoder” podcast published Monday, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston (a.k.a. "DHH" among techies) mounted a zealous argument for the importance of AI while defending his company’s 500-worker layoff in April 2023. The two things are linked, he said, noting that Dropbox’s layoff was largely aimed at freeing up cash to hire more engineers who are skilled in AI.

“We couldn’t make the math work with the way that we were structured,” Houston said during the podcast. “So we had to make a really tough decision to let go of a lot of people and then make room for the investments in AI and [Dropbox] Dash and all the stuff that we wanted to ultimately make the company successful. But it’s brutal.”

AI researchers have made huge technological leaps in recent years, but fears of overhype are beginning to bubble up at large companies like Microsoft, the Information reported in March. Houston had no such qualms in the interview with Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel. After explaining the layoffs, the file-hosting service’s CEO called AI more important than “PC, cloud, mobile, or the internet” and likened it to “fire or electricity or the industrial revolution.”