According to Foresight News , citing The Block, StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson announced layoffs and organizational restructuring at an all-hands meeting on Monday. The company is expanding from infrastructure development to building its own products to generate meaningful revenue. Ben-Sasson stated that the layoffs aim to return to a "startup mode" and accelerate product-to-market fit. The company will take full control of the verification stack, including Cairo, Sierra, and STARK encryption technologies, to reduce reliance on external Layer 1 networks and application teams. The scale and timeline of the layoffs were not disclosed. Affected employees will receive email invitations to speak one-on-one with their managers. The company has pledged severance pay exceeding legal and contractual requirements in most jurisdictions.
This restructuring will create two independent business units: the Applications unit (focused on revenue), headed by current Chief Product Officer Avihu Levy, and the Starknet Development unit, headed by current Product Manager Tom Brand. Additionally, Chief Financial Officer Ran Grinshtein will be responsible for finance, human resources, security, and IT; Gideon Kaempfer will become Chief Architect; and Chief Operating Officer Oren Katz has submitted his resignation but will remain in his position until the end of April.
