AI Weekly Malaysia

Squarespace is cutting roughly 19% of its global workforce — about 300 employees — with a PR representative telling TechCrunch the restructuring is meant to "simplify how we operate" and let the company "move faster." TechCrunch frames the cut against the rise of prompt-based "vibe-coding" site builders: Wix bought Base44 for $80 million last year, Lovable raised a $400 million Series C in August at a $13.3 billion valuation, and Google recently launched Stitch for generating UI designs. Squarespace launched its own AI tool, Blueprint, in 2024 and has an AI-native platform called Forma on a waitlist; the company IPO'd in 2021 at a $10 billion valuation and went private in a $7 billion PE deal in 2024.

Why: If you host client sites on Squarespace or sell website-building work, a 19% staff cut plus an unreleased AI-native platform (Forma, still waitlist-only) is a roadmap-and-support risk signal — decide now whether to keep client sites there or line up a migration path before renewal. For founders, the numbers to note are Lovable's $13.3 billion valuation and Wix's $80 million Base44 buy: that is the funding benchmark your AI site-builder competitor is operating against, and the incumbent template/hosting model is the thing being priced out.