Dune cuts 25% of staff to focus on AI, institutional crypto

Dune, the crypto data platform, reduced its workforce by 25% on Thursday. CEO and co-founder Fredrik Haga wrote on Twitter that the company will focus on AI tooling and on encouraging institutional adoption of on-chain data.

Haga framed the change as a refocus on the company’s core data products and new AI-driven offerings, writing that Dune is now “all-in on two shifts: AI and institutions coming onchain.” He pointed to the platform’s MCP product, which the company says allows users to build dashboards without SQL or managing data infrastructure.

In March, Dune interviewed about 300 candidates for engineering and data roles and made “AI fluency” a hiring requirement, Haga wrote earlier. The company did not disclose the exact number of employees affected, only that a quarter of the team was let go and that the departing staff were “exceptional people” he could recommend.

Haga added that Dune remains well capitalized after eight years operating through market cycles, closing his message with the phrase “The Data Must Flow.”

The cuts at Dune follow recent reductions at other crypto firms. Coinbase announced a roughly 14% reduction in staff while shifting toward an AI-first model. The Algorand Foundation and Gemini have each reduced staff by about 25% in the past months.

Recruitment specialists said AI and market conditions are changing hiring needs. Robert Lycett, head of recruitment at RiskPod, noted that AI can reduce costs at the junior level by automating low-level administrative tasks and can be used as a rationale for layoffs that reflect broader market pressures.

Vedang Vatsa, founder of a Web3 job board, observed that founders are cutting basic technical roles while seeking engineers who can add AI capabilities to blockchain products and are willing to pay more for those skills. Shubhada Pande, founder of Art of Blockchain, stated that remaining roles are being reshaped so employees must use AI tools, verify AI-generated outputs and apply judgment where automation falls short.

Dune described the reorganization as a product-focused consolidation to concentrate resources on its end-to-end crypto data stack and new AI offerings.