Fiverr’s dramatic stock collapse on Wednesday is proving to be a real-time example of how artificial intelligence is decimating the gig economy.

Shares of online freelance marketplace Fiverr International (Nasdaq: FVRR) were down over 20% midday Wednesday at the time of this writing, after the company reported lackluster second-quarter 2026 fiscal earnings.

Fiverr reported $97.78 million in revenue, missing analyst estimates of $100.38 million), a gap of -2.59%.

That year-over-year (YoY) decline of 10% was “due to a decline in low-value transactional work,” according to Fiverr chief technology officer Esti Levy Dadon.

Earnings-per-share (EPS) of $0.50 also came in short of expectations of $0.52, off by -3.85%, and down from $0.69 a year ago.

“[This quarter] reflects an ongoing compression in high volume, low value transactional work driven by accelerating AI adoption,” Fiverr founder and CEO Micha Kaufman said in an earnings call on Wednesday morning. “As LLMs continue to evolve rapidly, we’re seeing our customers accelerate their adoption of AI and workflow automation.”

Kaufman said high-value work on Fiverr represents only 15% of completed projects’ gross order value, and is expected to continue to grow, while transactional work, which represents the rest, continues to compress.

“Put simply, AI is automating simple tasks. Fiverr is moving toward larger, longer duration projects where AI deployment meets human judgment, strategic partnership, and accountability,” she said.

Going forward, Kaufman said this means Fiverr must evolve how work on the platform is matched, delivered, and managed; and, as a result, the company expects the “financial impact to build over several quarters.”

For some Fiverr watchers, there is a sense of irony in all this: Just a year ago, the platform was touting itself as an “AI-first” company. Now, Fiverr is being undercut by—of all things—AI.