It turns out that 75% of the engineering team at the developer of the CSS framework 'Tailwind CSS' was fired
A pull request for the open-source CSS framework 'Tailwind CSS' was closed for being 'unprofitable.' Adam Wasan of Tailwind Labs, the developer of Tailwind CSS, responded to the criticism by saying, 'We were so unprofitable that we had to lay off 75% of our engineering staff.'
feat: add llms.txt endpoint for LLM-optimized documentation by quantizor · Pull Request #2388 · tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com · GitHub
On November 19, 2025, a pull request was created on Tailwind Labs' GitHub to improve the readability of Tailwind CSS documentation for large-scale language models (LLMs). However, since there was no response, the contributors mentioned Tailwind Labs on January 7, 2026.
Adam Wasan, the main developer of Tailwind CSS, responded in person, saying, 'We have more important issues to address, like how to raise funds to keep our business afloat. Making our documentation more readable (as pointed out in the pull request) by LLM will only reduce access to our documentation, and fewer users will learn about our paid products, further reducing the sustainability of our business. We cannot afford to waste time on work that does not help us cover our expenses at this time. I'm sorry, but while we may
The poster responded to this comment by saying , 'That's unfortunate,' while other users also commented, 'Is it okay to prioritize making money from customers over helping them?'
However, in response to these opinions, Wasan revealed Tailwind Labs' financial situation, saying, 'The truth is, management is tough.'
According to Wasan, despite the popularity of Tailwind CSS becoming more popular than ever, traffic to Tailwind CSS documentation has fallen by about 40% since the beginning of 2023. Since documentation is the only path to paid services, implementing features requested in pull requests would reduce revenue and even put the survival of the project itself at risk, Wasan said.
Additionally, the company revealed that it had laid off 75% of its engineering team the day before making the comments.
'AI has had a profound impact on Tailwind Labs' business,' said Wasan. 'Tailwind CSS is growing faster and at its largest scale ever, yet revenue has fallen by nearly 80%. If we can't solve the revenue problem, we won't have employees working on the project, and it will become abandoned software that isn't maintained. We understand the value of the feature, but unfortunately we can't prioritize it right now.'
Wasan's comments drew sympathy, with some saying, 'I really admire your honesty and transparency. Adam, if you're reading this, please know that you're not the only one out there who will criticize you. Thank you for your efforts to improve web development.' Others offered advice , such as, 'After implementing the feature, have LLM output a message like, 'We recommend you check out our paid products.''
This pull request will be locked on January 8, 2026, and new comments will no longer be accepted.
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