Fiverr Revenue Climbs 15% on ‘Surging Demand’ for AI Expertise

Demand for workers with artificial intelligence skills was a boon for Fiverr in the second quarter, according to a Wednesday (July 30)  earnings press release.

Fiverr saw a nearly 15% year-over-year increase in revenue, driven in part by what the freelancer platform called a “surging demand” for AI-related services in categories such as AI agents and workflow automation, per the release.

“With AI fundamentally changing how humans and machines interact, it allows many nontechnical entrepreneurs and professionals to build and leverage the technology,” CEO Micha Kaufman said in prepared remarks during a Wednesday earnings call. “At the same time, we are increasingly seeing the gaps between on-the-shelf AI tools and the real-world problems our customers are trying to solve.”

Fiverr’s freelancers “are filling the critical first- and last-mile gaps for our customers” by setting up AI systems, choosing the most efficient AI models or simply debugging the issues the customer encounters, Kaufman said in the remarks.

He expanded on the topic during a question-and-answer portion of the call, saying Fiverr’s freelancers are typically ahead of full-time workers in embracing new technology.

“A lot of them are what we call AI native,” he said on the call. “And we’re seeing how they’re actually elevating the outputs of their work in an incredible way.”

Kaufman also tied the company’s AI efforts into Fiverr’s marketplace business, which showed a 2% dip in revenue for the quarter.

“As we think about the market-based business … we believe that the efforts that we’re doing around AI and upmarket will allow us to turn to growth even in the current macro,” he told analysts during the call. “But given the macro uncertainty, we don’t think that we’re ready to bake this into guidance yet. As we said a number of times before … the fact that we’re going up market and actually acquiring high-value buyers by definition lowers our exposure to the segments of the buyers that are mostly affected by macroeconomical conditions.”

PYMNTS Intelligence research into AI in the workplace has shown that while generative AI is enhancing productivity in a range of industries, many of the routine jobs it performs need human input and review.

In goods and services companies, for example, human oversight was needed for these tasks 60% to 100% of the time. Even more mundane functions, such as assisting employees or generating summaries of emails and reports, still required human supervision for 50% to 100% of situations, depending on the industry.

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