Eigen Labs has laid off 29 employees, or 25% of its staff, in a large-scale restructuring that will focus its resources on EigenCloud as its lead developer platform. CEO Sreeram Kannan, in a statement on X, noted the move was part of a tighter strategy to create a verifiable cloud platform. The move was not triggered by financial strains.
Today is one of the hardest days we’ve had at Eigen Labs.
This morning, I shared plans for a restructuring of the company, streamlining our operations, and concentrating our efforts on building and scaling EigenCloud. Unfortunately, this means saying goodbye to brilliant…
— Sreeram Kannan (@sreeramkannan) July 8, 2025
The company boasts a long runway after being funded with a series of investments, with the latest being a16z investment worth $70 million and a total of $220 million. This investment supports Eigen Labs’ development studio.
According to Kannan, the restructuring will ensure resources align with the needs of the core products and usage scenarios. He called the move “painful” but essential for long-term growth as the team returns to growing the EigenCloud in supporting off- and onchain verification.
Layoffs include support, engineering, and operations roles
The affected staff came to several departments, a sign of an organization-wide change, instead of cutting down a particular department. Although no more layoffs are on the horizon, Kannan stressed that the company would do its best to assist the departing members of the team.
Affected employees over one year of service were given accelerated token vesting, three months’ base pay, continuation of healthcare, and career support. The company further guaranteed that it would link former employees with partner businesses to hire in the crypto and Web3 sector. In a subsequent tweet, Kannan encouraged the larger crypto community to think about onboarding the available talent at their companies and switched on direct messages for referrals.
EigenCloud to remain core product alongside EigenLayer and EigenDA
Last month, EigenCloud was announced as a developer-centric platform facilitating verifiable computation. EigenCloud acts as a decentralized compute layer, enabling developers to execute off-chain computation, borrowing the cryptographic verification tightly coupled with on-chain activity. It generalizes the initial premise of EigenLayer by allowing more generic applications to utilize decentralized guarantees on trust.
It is constructed over the EigenLayer protocol, which Kannan said is already completed, and is currently in an enhancement phase. The affiliated data availability layer, EigenDA, will also be developed further.
The recent a16z fundraising is an extension of the overall strategy of Eigen Labs to fulfil the increasing demand for verifiable compute services with the increasing integration of AI. According to Kannan, the stage is supported by thousands of operators worldwide and billions in stake.
He reaffirmed that the reorganization was necessary to make execution sharper and to minimize the operational complexity. The message ended with a forward-looking note: “Tomorrow we return more focused, more aligned, and ready to build what’s next.”
The news was positively received in the market as the price of Eigen’s native token (EIGEN) increased by almost 10% to approximately $1.16 after the news came out.
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