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Blockchain data platform Dune has laid off a quarter of its workforce. Co-founder and CEO Fredrik Haga announced the cuts on X on Thursday, framing the decision as a product-driven restructuring rather than financial distress.
We’re restructuring Dune to sharpen our focus around the core data products thousands of customers across the crypto industry rely on. That unfortunately means we’ve let 25% of the team go this week. These are exceptional people I can wholeheartedly recommend — ping me if you’re…
— hagaetc (@hagaetc) May 14, 2026
“We’re restructuring Dune to sharpen our focus around the core data products thousands of customers across the crypto industry rely on,” Haga wrote yesterday. “That unfortunately means we’ve let 25% of the team go this week.”
Haga said Dune is going “all-in on two shifts: AI and institutions coming onchain.” On the AI side, he pointed to Dune MCP, a tool launched in March that lets teams and AI agents build dashboards and query onchain data without writing SQL. “With Dune MCP, teams and agents can now build dashboards and workflows without needing to know anything about SQL nor data infrastructure,” he wrote.
On the institutional side, he described plans to invest in Dune’s data layer and white-glove service for financial firms as currencies, stocks, bonds, and commodities move onchain. Haga also made a point of distinguishing the move from financial pressure: “For 8 years we’ve grown through multiple rollercoaster cycles while other data providers have come and gone. We remain well capitalised, excited about the future, and committed to our mission.”
The announcement comes ten days after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted publicly on X that the exchange was cutting roughly 14% of its workforce – about 700 employees. Armstrong framed the cuts in similar terms. “We are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it,” he wrote. He said AI had allowed engineers to ship in days what previously required a team of weeks, and described plans to eliminate “pure manager” roles in favour of “player-coaches” who both lead and contribute directly. The company is also building “AI-native pods” – small units, potentially staffed by a single person, directing AI agents across engineering, design, and product functions.
Similarly, Meta has announced a further round of cuts scheduled for May 20, when approximately 8,000 employees – 10% of its global workforce – will be notified. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors at the start of the year that 2026 would be one where AI “dramatically changes the way that we work.” The company’s chief people officer described the cuts as part of an effort to run more efficiently while offsetting AI infrastructure spending projected at 15 billion to 35 billion this year.
Whether AI is genuinely driving these decisions or serving as a convenient frame for them has become a recurring debate. Sam Altman of OpenAI has warned that some companies are “AI washing” – attributing unrelated layoffs to AI to spin reductions as progress rather than retreat.
At Dune, Haga’s language was careful to ground the decision in product strategy and the company’s financial stability, not in cost pressure. That framing may be accurate. It is also, increasingly, the standard one.
