Payments company Block’s second-quarter earnings call showcased the company’s strategy about how AI will reshape how it builds software and, increasingly, how it underwrites risk. 

During the first half of 2026, the company shipped 130 features, more than three times the number it shipped during the corresponding period in 2025, Owen Jennings, business lead, said during the company’s Q2 earnings call on Aug. 5.  

“All of that is because of the foundation and the investment in AI tools over the past three years,” he said. 

Code changes per engineer increased 150% since the start of the year, Jennings said, adding that AI now is part of nearly every code generation, code change or review process.

AI has allowed Block to develop software at breakneck speed with near zero costs, he added. 

“The biggest proof point is our  shipping velocity,” Chairman and co-founder Jack Dorsey said during the earnings call, pointing to the company’s rapid development of its open-source model Buzz, launched in July. 

Buzz is the company’s agentic collaboration platform, which is used internally for development and coordination. 

Jennings framed the shift in blunter terms: Shipping speed and product quality used to trade off against each other; that’s no longer true at Block. 

The company’s continued investment in AI is “compounding” as the cost of software development collapses, Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja said during the earnings call, adding that the business’ lending segment also is benefiting from AI. 

The underwriting moat 

Block has used machine learning in its solutions for more than 15 years for seller onboarding, fraud detection and loan underwriting, Dorsey said, adding that what has changed is the scale of AI usage at the company. 

Consumer lending origination volume at Cash App, its peer to peer payment platform, grew 59% year over year to $18.9 billion in Q2, driven largely by lending to retail clients. 

Meanwhile, its SMB lending solution, Square Loans, uses transaction data that banks and other SMB lenders don’t have access to, Dorsey explained. 

The company also is pushing its data advantage further into consumer credit, Dorsey wrote. Cash App Score, a near-real-time, individualized credit score built on Cash App activity, expanded its engagement testing to more customers in the quarter. 

Block says in the letter that says thatrisk and lending were its compan “first intelligence layer,” built on a two-sided network — sellers on Square and consumers on Cash App — that generates transactions, inventory, cash flow and spending data no single-sided lender can replicate. 

AI-driven shipping speed means Block can rely on underwriting models and risk products faster than institutions running slower, compliance-gated release cycles, Dorsey said. 

BY THE NUMBERS: In Q2, Block reported: 

• Revenue of $6.6 billion, up 10% YoY; 

• Gross profit of $3.2 billion, up 24.8% YoY; and 

• Operating expense of $2.7 billion, up 35% YoY. 

Register here for the FinAi Lending Summit, set for Oct. 7-8 in Las Vegas. This inaugural event will include speakers from Fifth Third and Capital One as well as a fireside chat with Piermont Bank founder and Chief Executive Wendy Cai-Lee.