Crypto custody and infrastructure firm BitGo Holdings has reduced its workforce by nearly 15%, a move that reflects a strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence, stablecoins, settlement services, and trading infrastructure. CEO and co-founder Mike Belshe announced the layoffs in a June 25 post on X, which was also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission via a Form 8-K disclosure.
“Today I’m sharing a hard decision: we are reducing our workforce by nearly 15%,” Belshe wrote, noting that the digital asset ecosystem has evolved and the company must sharpen its focus. He described the cuts as a one-time action and added that BitGo does not anticipate further reductions. Affected employees were notified privately before the public announcement.
Based on BitGo’s 2025 annual report listing 603 full-time employees as of December 31, 2025, the reduction amounts to roughly 90 roles. Despite the layoffs, BitGo’s job board continues to list 51 open positions across engineering, compliance, security, finance, and other departments in multiple regions including the U.S., Canada, India, Singapore, and Brazil. This indicates a targeted reallocation of resources rather than an across-the-board retreat.
The restructuring arrives amid pressure on the company’s publicly traded stock. BitGo priced its initial public offering at $18 per share in January 2026, raising approximately $212.8 million and achieving a fully diluted valuation above $2 billion. First-quarter revenue surged 112.6% to $3.77 billion, driven by digital asset sales and growth in its Stablecoin-as-a-Service segment, but net losses widened to $60.7 million. BTGO shares closed at $4.80 on June 25, down 4.76% on the session and 73% below the IPO price.
BitGo’s new direction aligns with broader industry trends where custodians seek to capture higher-value institutional workflows beyond simple custody. The company is doubling down on stablecoins—a segment increasingly used for payments, remittances, and settlement—and AI-powered tools for security, compliance monitoring, and operational automation. Recent moves, such as expanding into institutional DeFi through Aave, Spark, and Tesseract, and offering off-exchange settlement for OKX’s U.S. institutional clients, show why settlement and custody remain central to its post-layoff plan.
The layoffs also mirror a wider tech-sector phenomenon. According to Layoffs.fyi, more than 119,000 tech workers across 196 companies have lost their jobs in 2026, many citing restructuring and AI-related shifts. For BitGo, the bet is that concentrating talent on stablecoin infrastructure, settlement, and AI will position it to meet demand from large financial institutions and stablecoin issuers that require regulated, secure, and efficient infrastructure.
