Bolt CEO fires HR as AI set to automate half the function
Bolt's decision to eliminate its HR department highlights a critical governance gap just as AI is projected to automate half of all human resources tasks by the end of the decade.
Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt, recently eliminated his company’s entire human resources department. Speaking at a recent industry summit, Breslow argued the team was “creating problems that didn’t exist.”
However, Bolt subsequently established a "people operations" team to manage mandatory training and employee resources. On LinkedIn, Breslow claimed “HR is the wrong energy, format, and approach,” arguing that a rebranded people ops function “empowers managers, streamlines decision making, and keeps the company moving at lightning speed.”
For investors and executives, this move illustrates a common governance failure: confusing structural rebranding with operational strategy. Disbanding a compliance-focused HR team and replacing it with a similarly mandated group under a different name does not resolve underlying organizational inefficiencies. It simply reduces headcount while preserving the exact same structural flaws.
A truly strategic people function provides systemic oversight and tracks leading indicators, such as shifting skill valuations and pipeline vulnerabilities. When empowered, these teams link corporate behaviors directly to business rewards, a dynamic that back-office compliance metrics fail to capture. Google’s Project Oxygen demonstrated this when data analysis shifted manager development away from pure technical expertise toward coaching and communication.
This corporate restructuring is occurring against a backdrop of rapid technological disruption. Gartner projects that by 2030, artificial intelligence agents will automate or perform 50% of current HR activities. Furthermore, research by The Josh Bersin Company indicates HR departments could be 30% to 50% smaller by the decade's end.
Critically, the same research suggests the proportion of strategic work within these teams will rise from roughly 30% to as much as 75%. Executive leaders face a definitive choice. They can use AI as an excuse to simply slash headcount and rebrand departments, or they can leverage automation to absorb administrative burdens and finally elevate their talent functions to a strategic level.
