Dutch communications platform Bird is cutting around 20 per cent of its global headcount.
The bulk of the reductions in Europe, as founder and CEO Robert Vis openly blames the growing regulatory and structural burdens of operating from the continent.
Impacted staff will receive support packages and an all-hands call was scheduled to answer questions.
In a note to staff published on multiple online platforms yesterday, Vis made clear that proximity to its US-heavy customer base was the primary driver but he did not shy away from the deeper European problem.
“Building a global tech company from a European base has also gotten harder over the past decade,” he wrote. “That is a longer conversation, one I have made publicly and it is part of the picture here.”
Bird, formerly MessageBird, generated about $250 million (€212 million) in net revenue last year and remains profitable.
Yet 75 per cent of that revenue now comes from US-headquartered customers, including most Fortune 500 companies, Big Tech firms and AI-native players.
The company’s engineering and operations were originally built around an Amsterdam headquarters when Europe felt like a viable launchpad; that assumption no longer holds, Vis made clear.
AI has compounded the shift by automating tasks that once required dedicated staff. Hiring will continue in the US, with a focus on go-to-market and engineering roles closer to customers.
The announcement is the latest in a series of moves that have seen Bird steadily retreat from its European roots.
In February 2025 it cut 120 jobs, around a third of its workforce at the time, as part of a realignment.
Vis then stated publicly that the company was “mostly leaving Europe” because the continent “lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology”.
He warned that forthcoming regulations would “block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI”.
“The AI Act, financing, compensation, taxes, employment law — starting and running a company [in Europe] is hard,” he has said.
“There are too many disparate markets that are over-regulated with no clear vision for the future while the world around us is changing.
“Both The Hague and Brussels enjoy being in meetings and talking more than they get sh*t done,” Vis said, adding that European Union policymakers are “killing innovation”.
This stands in sharp contrast to the European Commission’s repeated promises to make the bloc a digital powerhouse.
From the Digital Single Market strategy and the Digital Decade targets to the €100 billion Horizon Europe programme and the AI Act itself, Brussels has layered on legislation and compliance obligations while claiming to foster innovation.
In practice, many founders say the result has been higher costs, legal uncertainty, slower decision-making and a competitive disadvantage against faster-moving US and Asian rivals.
European tech companies routinely cite talent shortages in key areas, rigid labour protections that raise hiring and firing costs, sluggish venture capital deployment and the practical nightmare of navigating 27 national interpretations of EU rules.
The AI Act, intended to build “trustworthy AI”, has instead been criticised for prioritising risk aversion over the rapid experimentation that defines the current technological race.
Founded in 2011, Bird offers a cloud platform for business messaging across SMS, WhatsApp, email and voice. It powers communications for major brands including Meta, PayPal and Uber.
After reaching unicorn status, being a privately held start-up valued at over $1 billion (€850 million), and rebranding in 2024 while slashing SMS prices by 90 per cent to challenge Twilio, the company has now undertaken multiple rounds of restructuring.
Several similar European tech companies have shifted operations, headquarters, or primary focus to the US in recent years, often citing better access to capital, customers, talent and a less burdensome regulatory environment.
Remote, an HR and global payroll platform founded in 2019 by Dutch entrepreneurs, chose San Francisco as its base from the outset rather than the Netherlands.
The founders explicitly pointed to heavy European regulation as a barrier to innovation and scaling. Its leadership has been outspoken, publicly advising other startups to leave Europe if they want to succeed. The company is now a multi-billion-dollar unicorn with a fully remote structure but strong US roots.
Others making the same move were Swedish electric aviation tech company Heart Aerospace, Romanian robotic process automation company UiPath and French AI/ML platform Hugging Face.
Most companies make a partial shift to the US, moving sales, engineering leadership and legal entities to the US, while keeping some R&D in Europe.
European legislation on AI and GDPR are often cited as reasons to move, along with fragmented markets, over-regulation and limited access to venture capital.
