Startups may be the next ones hit by a wave of AI-driven layoffs.<\/p>\n
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0G Labs, a San Francisco startup that builds blockchains for AI agents, says it’s cutting a quarter of its staff because its agents are so good at doing human jobs.<\/p>\n
0G Labs announced the decision last week in an email from its CEO, Michael Heinrich, that was viewed by Business Insider.<\/p>\n
Heinrich said the company is becoming “a leaner, faster AI-native company” and is now focused on scaling up AI rather than head count.<\/p>\n
“Every day, we talk about a world where AI agents handle the work humans shouldn’t have to do,” his email reads. “It’s time to operate that way ourselves.”<\/p>\n
Heinrich’s email added that staff should use AI every day to achieve “20x” their previous output, while human judgment remains “essential.”<\/p>\n
0G Labs said in a statement that while decisions surrounding layoffs are “never easy,” the efficiencies it has seen from AI agents are real.<\/p>\n
“As a company building AI infrastructure, we believe in running on the same technology we provide to others,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
0G Labs had said it raised about $350 million in funding and hit a valuation of $2 billion as of last year. It was featured at the time in a Business Insider article about AI unicorns with tiny teams<\/a>, which said the company had about 40 staff.<\/p>\n The startup’s crypto token, $0G, is down in price by over 80% since it launched last year, according to CoinMarketCap. 0G Labs didn’t comment on whether this affected its decision to cut staff.<\/p>\n AI-driven layoffs have hit the tech industry hard after the technology advanced by leaps and bounds over the holidays, in what some dubbed\u00a0“Claude Christmas,”<\/a> a reference to Anthropic’s chatbot.<\/p>\n In February, fintech company Block cut<\/a> nearly half its entire workforce due to AI, while Coinbase announced Tuesday<\/a> that it’s letting go of 14% of its employees due to AI as well.<\/p>\n Have a tip? Contact Charles Rollet via email at crollet@businessinsider.com<\/a> or on Signal and WhatsApp at 628-282-2811. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Startups may be the next ones hit by a wave of AI-driven layoffs. Loading audio narration… 0G Labs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,511,25,1329,532,2517,18920,8940,18918,9982,11058,18919,18921,8312,2315,1138],"class_list":{"0":"post-28797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-agent","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-business-insider","12":"tag-company","13":"tag-day","14":"tag-decision","15":"tag-email","16":"tag-g-labs","17":"tag-last-year","18":"tag-layoff","19":"tag-michael-heinrich","20":"tag-same-technology","21":"tag-staff","22":"tag-startup","23":"tag-workforce"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}