Tampa startups say AI is changing how they hire

A report that Meta is weighing cuts of more than 20% of its workforce has landed at a moment when many startups are already building with fewer people.

The company, which employed nearly 79,000 workers at the end of 2025, is pouring tens of billions into artificial intelligence infrastructure this year. It called the layoff report “speculative,” but the dynamic is already shaping how younger companies operate: investing in systems that reduce the need to hire.

At Eskuad, a Tampa-based software company, work that once required multiple employees is now handled by a smaller team supported by AI agents. Customer support inquiries are handled by bots trained on company data. Planning cycles that once stretched across teams now take hours.

“We haven’t been hiring so far because of that,” said Max Echeverría, the company’s founder and chief executive. “You’re not replacing one-to-one. You’re replacing one-to-many.”

He said AI now handles about 50% to 60% of the workload traditionally assigned to customer success teams. Sales outreach that once depended on dedicated representatives now runs through automated systems that tailor messages. Development planning that once required meetings and estimates is now generated by AI.

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“We used to plan six months of work,” he said. “Now we can generate that roadmap in a day.”

Eskuad reduced monthly operating expenses from about $46,000 to $16,000 after shifting more work to AI. Output increased at the same time, he said, reaching roughly six times prior levels.

The changes are concentrated in repetitive roles, including sales development, customer support and early-stage coding. More complex work remains tied to human review. Code is checked by AI systems and then reviewed before release. Customer interactions that carry risk still pass through a person.

“I always keep a human in the loop for the most relevant decisions,” Echeverría said.

Training those systems now resembles onboarding employees. At Eskuad, building an agent to a usable level took about two months of feedback and iteration.

At Clarky.AI, the shift shows up in how companies handle incoming customers.

Tyler Clark, the company’s founder and chief executive, developed a system that answers questions across chat, phone, text and email using information pulled from a company’s website. Businesses can deploy it quickly and respond to inquiries without adding staff.

“For a lot of companies, it’s about not missing opportunities,” Clark said. “If you can’t answer the phone or respond right away, AI can step in.”

A dental office can use the system to take calls after hours, schedule appointments and sort urgent cases from routine ones. A contractor can respond to inquiries while crews are in the field. The system can also hand control back to a person when needed.

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“You have to know when to use AI and when not to,” Clark said. “If there’s any question that it doesn’t have, that might stop me from signing up with that company.”

Clarky.AI has signed up more than 300 businesses since launching last year. Many use it to manage communication, booking and customer data in one place, replacing a mix of tools that would otherwise require additional staff to operate.

Startups have traditionally expanded by adding roles across sales, support and operations. That structure is shifting as more of that work becomes programmable. One employee, supported by AI, can handle tasks that once required several people. Entry-level roles are often the first to be affected because the work can be defined and repeated.

“Before, you needed to hire people for each vertical or role,” Echeverría said. “Now you can train agents to handle those tasks across multiple industries.”

“If you’re a small business, you don’t want five different systems to run everything,” Clark said. “You want one platform that can handle it.”

Across the technology sector, companies have announced layoffs tied in part to AI investment while committing record levels of capital to build out infrastructure. For startups, the shift is happening earlier, as companies adopt the tools early in their development.

“You’re either building with this or competing against someone who is,” Echeverría said. “It’s like using a boat while someone else is using a plane.”