BitGo is cutting 15 percent of its staff, according to an announcement made by CEO Mike Belshe on Thursday. The company believes that it needs to become more focussed on adopting an AI-powered infrastructure to “keep winning their clients” in the face of the evolving technological landscape.
Launched in 2013, BitGo is a digital asset infrastructure company that offers services like crypto custody, prime brokerage, and Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS),
Belshe said, moving forward the California-headquarted company would concentrate concentrate on improving its offerings around security, trading, stablecoins, and settlement — that nudged the firm to initiate an internal restructuring.
“By the time you read this message, everyone affected will already have heard directly from their manager and HR. I wouldn’t make this call if I didn’t believe deeply in our future. Let’s go build it,” Belshe said.
The company presently employs around 500 people, as per its LinkedIn profile. According to this information, around 75 staff members have been fired from BitGo. The exact number remains unknown for now.
The influx of AI into the corporate and financial ecosystems is rapidly taking shape across the globe. Several big tech and crypto firms including Meta, Microsoft, Cloudfare, Coinbase, and Kraken among others have announced massive layoffs — most of which were driven by these companies adopting AI tools.
In January this year, BitGo went public on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and raised $212 million at a valuation of over of $2 billion. Earlier this week, the company announced the launch of its new vault service to let institutional investors waddle into DeFi services such as lending.
Belshe said that the company foresees a clear, strong path forward with no more layoffs anticipated in the near future.
This is the second crypto layoff announcement from a crypto major this week. On June 23, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced a 20 percent reduction to its workforce — letting 54 team members go. The EF said the aim of the layoff is to make the team leaner and more focussed on building the next iteration of the Ethereum chain.
