MEGA cuts 20% of staff, days after earmarking $30M for AI inference

On November 13, MEGA, previously known as MegaETH Foundation, reduced around 20% of its staff, just three days after allocating $30 million for the development of new products. The layoff included personnel who developed its Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, wallet, and wider ecosystem. Now, MEGA is preparing to launch its AI inference marketplace in December amid its expansion plans.

Who lost their jobs, and who stayed

Co-founder Shuyao Kong commented that the layoffs were the result of several months of restructuring. Some of the departing employees were among the first people involved with MegaETH. The founders, first group of employees, and core engineering team members remain at the company. MEGA has not revealed how many employees it has had in total, which leaves the number of the cuts unknown.

On November 10, the foundation was renamed to develop new products in parallel with its blockchain. The question is whether a smaller team will manage to keep MegaETH up while releasing these products.

A $30 million bet on ‘Purified Intelligence’

MEGA will fund its expansion beyond the blockchain with $30 million from its existing treasury, not a new fundraising round. The MegaETH team previously raised more than $80 million through investments, an NFT sale and token sales. MEGA’s largest planned venture is an AI inference marketplace due in December.

Inference is the act of generating answers with the help of a trained AI model. MEGA’s whitepaper states that developers may avoid cheaper service providers as they cannot be sure of the advertised models and the ways of their data is protected. MEGA has given the name of “Purified Intelligence” to its solution, which is intended to make services from different providers easier to trust and evaluate.

The marketplace will be built on the MegaETH blockchain. Network upgrades for quicker transaction finality are already planned. MEGA has not disclosed names of its suppliers and models, so commercial benefits are still unknown.

Why cuts alone prove nothing about AI

Job cuts may free up money, but they don’t prove AI pays off. In a Gartner survey of 350 executives at large companies, roughly 80% of organizations testing or using autonomous technologies reported layoffs. Those cuts were just as common among businesses with strong returns as those with weaker results.

The slowdown in hiring within the cryptocurrency sector has made the situation even more complex. According to a recent analysis carried out by Tiger Research, job advertisements declined by almost 80% in January 2026 when compared to the same time last year.

In May, Coinbase revealed that it was going to cut 14% of its workforce because of market conditions and the introduction of AI. FICO also said it would be cutting 15% of its workforce and that it would incur costs of $27 million in connection with this as noted in its SEC filing. Neither of the two examples provides evidence that the use of AI led to savings, which justified such cuts.

Can a smaller provider actually compete

MEGA hopes its marketplace will help smaller AI providers compete. But research shows that more inference suppliers are already entering the market as prices fall. The OECD also warns that access to computing power remains concentrated. MEGA must show what its verification system offers beyond services that already compare providers.

The MegaETH blockchain faces challenges of its own. The value locked in its decentralized-finance applications stood near $9.8 million on November 13, down from a peak above $245 million. The MEGA token traded near $0.045, well below its April high of roughly $0.209. These figures do not directly measure demand for AI inference, but they add pressure to make the new venture work.

The December launch will provide the first real test. Will developers pay to use MEGA’s marketplace? Can the company attract reliable suppliers? And what role will the MEGA token play in the new business?