Tailwind Creator Says Ai Played A Role In Downsizing

Tailwind CSS, nan celebrated CSS framework, laid disconnected 3 engineers — 75% of its engineering squad — connected Monday. In a personal podcast posted to nan X level connected Wednesday, Tailwind creator Adam Wathan claimed that AI played a important domiciled successful nan unfastened root project’s declining revenues.

“I do deliberation nan percent is important to share, because to opportunity that, ‘Oh, we person to fto spell 3 people, it doesn’t sound for illustration we person to do much, but successful reality, we person 4 engineers connected staff, and now we person one,” Wathan said of nan layoffs. “So it is simply a large change.”

But by Thursday afternoon, nan communicative had shifted, pinch frontend unreality institution Vercel, Postgres improvement level SupaBase, and Google AI Studio stating successful tweets that they would sponsor nan project. Tailwind CSS has had a sponsorship program since summertime of 2025.

Vercel will beryllium officially sponsoring https://t.co/Hs11QYJcfK. That’s a given. We arsenic a organization and manufacture beryllium @adamwathan and squad a lot. Tailwind is foundational web infrastructure astatine this constituent (it fixed CSS 😉). I’ve besides reached retired to Adam to research really we tin make this…
— Guillermo Rauch (@rauchg) January 8, 2026

Wathan said Friday via Twitter that he had been “overwhelmed by nan support complete nan past 24 hours,” which was not thing he expected erstwhile he recorded a podcast astir nan project’s financial condition.

“Thanks truthful overmuch to everyone pinch words of encouragement, nan caller sponsors we’ve brought on, and group who’ve utilized their platforms to thief successful immoderate way, I’m highly touched,” he wrote.

That said, he added that:

“We’re comfortable, and things for illustration our partner programme are helping a batch to money nan model much straight alternatively of trading products that are much astatine consequence of disruption. We don’t request anyone to rescue us, we’ve sewage tons of clip and abstraction to effort caller ideas and spot what useful 🙏🏻 I’m optimistic we’ll fig retired really to get things moving successful nan correct direction, but moreover if we conscionable person beryllium a smaller business pinch little fund than we’ve had successful nan past that’s okay excessively ❤️.”

Wathan said Wednesday he knew — and has publically acknowledged — that gross was declining, but he believed it had stabilized. Then he looked astatine nan forecasting information complete nan vacation break.

He said he “was knocked disconnected guard” erstwhile he realized nan problem’s scope.

“If perfectly thing changed, past successful astir six months, we would nary longer beryllium capable to meet payroll obligations, which was a beautiful shitty point to realize,” he said. “Over nan break, we had to make nan existent determination to standard down nan size of nan team, thing nan business really tin afford, because if we didn’t do it now, past we would not beryllium capable to springiness group generous severance packages for them to person nan clip to find caller roles.”

It’s a astonishing improvement from Tailwind CSS, which Wathan touted arsenic an open root occurrence communicative backmost successful 2020.

“We’re besides astir to transverse $2 cardinal successful gross from Tailwind UI, our first commercialized Tailwind CSS merchandise which was released astir 5 months agone — a spot nether 2 years aft nan very first Tailwind CSS release,” he wrote astatine nan time.

Today, Tailwind CSS is nan astir celebrated CSS model by acold successful frontend development. It was cited arsenic nan preferred model by 51% of nan 5,506 study respondents successful Devographic’s 2025 State of CSS survey. Bootstrap came successful 2nd pinch 30% of nan responses.

What changed? Wathan believes it was partially owed to group utilizing AI to summarize Tailwind’s Docs, alternatively than going to nan existent Docs, which is wherever they tin study astir Tailwind’s paid offerings.

“The full AI point is intelligibly a double-edged sword, because  AI is simply a immense logic why our business is struggling, moreover though it’s making Tailwind much celebrated than ever,” he said.

Traffic to Tailwind’s Docs is down by 40% since 2023, he said successful a pull petition response.

“The full AI point is intelligibly a double edged sword, because AI is simply a immense logic why our business is struggling, moreover though it’s making Tailwind much celebrated than ever.”
— Tailwind creator Adam Wathan

“That’s our full distribution, and nan only measurement that there’s money to salary anyone to activity connected nan framework, nan free, unfastened root framework, is if group bargain nan products,” Wathan said successful his podcast “If moreover much group extremity looking astatine nan Docs because they’re relying connected LLMs [large connection models] crawling nan markdown endpoints … that conscionable feels for illustration moreover less group are going to find retired astir nan paid products, because nan markdown files, arsenic they are currently, don’t do thing to pass group astir nan beingness of nan commercialized stuff.”

Wathan said successful nan propulsion petition that he hopes to find a measurement to connection LLM-optimized docs truthful that nan business will not worsen, but he can’t prioritize that correct now. He warned that it whitethorn beryllium harder to adjacent PRs and create caller features pinch specified a constricted staff.

Tailwind’s remaining squad includes Watham and 2 different owners, 1 technologist and a part-time operations person, Watham revealed successful nan podcast. He closed by highlighting nan qualifications of nan 3 engineers he’d conscionable laid off.

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