Rocket Companies' embrace of AI shrunk workforce in 2024

Rocket Companies saw its ranks shrink by the hundreds throughout 2024, as it ramped up investments into becoming more of a technology-centric company.

At the end of the year, the megalender employed 14,200 team members based in the U.S. and Canada, a 500-person drop from 2023, annual filings with the Securities and Trade Commission show. At the end of 2021, the lender employed 26,000 workers.

The company's headcount throughout 2024 was partially adjusted due to its embrace of artificial intelligence tools, a Rocket executive said during its fourth quarter earnings call.

"Head count was down a bit year-over-year," said Brian Brown, Rocket's chief financial officer. "And really…[that] is the power of AI at work."

Rocket has spent over $500 million investing into cutting-edge technology, the company's CEO Varun Krishna said in the company's earnings call.

And Rocket is "nowhere near done" in its technological innovation. "You will continue to hear more and more quantifiable examples of how this is actually driving our business to improve both top and bottom line," Krishna added.

This may imply that Rocket's headcount may further change.

Technology initiatives funded by Rocket include a front-facing proprietary chatbot on its website, an internal workflow platform and a document processing platform, dubbed Rocket Logic Docs. 

The latter tool, according to Krishna, has classified over 21 million documents, saving team members "1 million hours," he said. Rocket said in a statement that it "continues to operate with discipline."

"We are leveraging artificial intelligence to break free from the traditional seesaw of mortgage staffing ... while headcount may fluctuate slightly from year to year, our powerful combination of AI and talented team members position us to achieve our mission of helping everyone home," a Rocket Companies spokesperson said in a statement to Detroit Free Press, which first reported on the company's headcount change.

Rocket Companies generated $649 million of net income in the fourth quarter of 2024, following a $481 million loss in the third quarter.

The lender's gain-on-sale margins grew to 2.98% in the fourth quarter, a 30 basis point increase from the previous quarter.

"Technology is the bedrock of our investment strategy, and it's at the very heart of our organization as well," Rocket's CEO said. "We're eliminating the hurdles that have made home buying complicated for decades. We are replacing them with a seamless, intuitive experience that is unmistakably Rocket."