XYZ · Earnings call · 2026Q2T · Full report

AI Infrastructure Investment

Block, Inc. · 2026-08-05 · Importance 56 · Surprise 82

Block launched Buzz, its agentic collaboration platform, publicly in July after using it internally for development and collaboration. Management plans continued investment in AI infrastructure, including Buzz, to increase product velocity and operating leverage. Code changes per engineer increased 150% from the start of 2026, while Square shipped 130 features in the first half of 2026, more than three times the first half of 2025. Block’s AI budgets are increasing, with Goose routing workloads across proprietary and open-source models based on quality and cost.

Key facts

• Block publicly launched Buzz, its agentic collaboration platform, in July.
• Block plans to continue to invest in AI infrastructure, including Buzz, to drive further velocity gains.
• Block said Goose is model agnostic and is part of their efficiency strategy for AI cost management.
• Block said its AI budgets are increasing but they focus on returns and intelligently routing workloads, leveraging multiple models including open-source models.
• Block said they have built an internal evaluation system that scores each model on metrics from quality to cost and route workloads based on quality and cost.
• Jack said Block was the first to release a coding harness to the world months before others.