Key Highlights
- Gemini has reduced its workforce by roughly 30% since the start of 2026, bringing total headcount to approximately 445 employees.
- The company reported a net loss of $587 million to $602 million for full-year 2025, with adjusted EBITDA losses between $257 million and $267 million.
- Gemini is exiting the UK, EU, and Australia, winding down its NFT platform Nifty Gateway, and pivoting toward prediction markets and a “super app” model.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’ crypto exchange Gemini has cut roughly 30% of its workforce since January, reducing its headcount to approximately 445 employees as of March 1—deeper than the 25% reduction the company initially announced in February.
The Winklevoss twins’ explanation for the scale of the reduction centers on a single word: AI.
“Today, AI is used in more than 40% of our production code changes and we expect that number to climb to close to 100% in the not-too-distant future,” they wrote. “Not using AI at Gemini will soon be the equivalent of showing up to work with a typewriter instead of a laptop.”
The language is deliberate. By attributing the workforce reduction to AI-enabled productivity rather than financial distress, the Winklevoss twins are framing the cuts as forward-looking transformation—not retreat.
It is a narrative that echoes across the tech industry in 2026, where companies from Block (4,000 layoffs) to Meta (reportedly planning 20% reductions) to Crypto.com (12% cuts announced the same day) have tied workforce reductions to AI adoption.
But in Gemini’s case, the AI narrative lands against a backdrop that makes it harder to take at face value: up to $602 million in annual losses, three continents abandoned, three C-suite executives gone, and a stock down 79% from its IPO price.
The numbers behind the cuts
The restructuring has been deeper and faster than initially disclosed.
On February 5, 2026, Gemini announced plans to cut up to 25% of its workforce—approximately 200 positions across the U.S. and Singapore. But the shareholder letter released on March 19 confirmed the actual reduction has reached 30%.
Gemini said in the shareholder letter that restructuring carried out since the beginning of the year has reduced its workforce by about 30%. As of March 1, it had around 445 employees.
The additional cuts beyond the initial 25% announcement came from further reductions to the U.S. headcount, according to Bloomberg’s reporting.
The company once employed upwards of 1,000 people during the 2021 bull market. The current headcount of 445 represents a reduction of more than half from peak levels — a trajectory that mirrors Crypto.com’s own contraction from over 5,000 employees to under 3,600 across multiple rounds of cuts since 2022.
Record quarterly revenue, but losses still define the year
The financial results that accompanied the restructuring announcement present a company in deep transition.
Q4 net revenue reached $56.4 million, up 13% sequentially, making it Gemini’s highest quarterly revenue in three years. For the full year, total revenue was $179.6 million, up 26% year-over-year. Q4 net loss was $140.8 million, with Q4 adjusted EBITDA at negative $92.2 million.
The revenue diversification showed real progress. Services revenue hit $64.6 million for 2025, up 115% year-over-year, and in Q4, services and interest revenue surpassed transaction revenue for the first time in the company’s history. The credit card business was the standout performer — card net revenue reached $33.1 million for 2025, up 185% year-over-year, with card transaction volume surpassing $1.2 billion and signups growing nearly 15x to approximately 117,000.
But the cost side overwhelmed everything. Full-year sales and marketing expenses surged to $97.1 million from $22.6 million in FY2024 — a more than fourfold increase—driven by crypto rewards, promotions, and card acquisition spending.
General and administrative expenses rose 51% to $77.5 million, reflecting audit, advisory, and compliance costs in Gemini’s first year as a public company. Technology and infrastructure expenses grew 21% to $77.1 million, with cloud computing costs alone up 46% to $45.6 million. Total compensation reached $225.9 million, including $85 million in stock-based compensation.
Below the operating line, the damage deepened. Gemini disclosed $243.1 million in net other expense for 2025 — a $258 million swing from $14.9 million in net other income the prior year. The letter attributed the shift to realized and unrealized losses on crypto assets, fair value changes on legacy related-party loan obligations that converted to equity at the IPO, and $70.3 million in interest expense on related-party and third-party debt.
Gemini ended Q4 with $252.2 million in cash and cash equivalents after repaying $116.5 million in third-party debt during the quarter. The company also holds 4,619 BTC received through prior related-party loan arrangements, of which 1,750 BTC previously held as minimum regulatory capital was approved for release in Q1 2026. The company did not provide a 2026 operating outlook, stating only that the restructuring is “expected to meaningfully reduce our quarterly operating expense run rate in 2026.”
More than headcount: A full operational reset
The AI-driven layoffs are just one layer of a restructuring that touches every dimension of Gemini’s business.
Geographic retreat: Gemini is closing all customer accounts in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, and Australian markets. The Winklevoss brothers said the plan this year was to “focus and double down on America.”
This exit is particularly notable because the Q3 2025 shareholder letter — Gemini’s first as a public company — had celebrated the Australian launch and the securing of MiCA and MiFID licenses in Europe as growth milestones. The reversal came within months.
Product shutdown: The restructuring also includes winding down Nifty Gateway, Gemini’s NFT marketplace, which had been positioned as part of the company’s creative economy strategy.
Leadership vacuum: On February 17, COO Marshall Beard, CFO Dan Chen, and CLO Tyler Meade all departed the company simultaneously. Gemini said it would not replace the COO, with Cameron Winklevoss absorbing many of those responsibilities. Interim appointments were made for CFO and General Counsel—but no permanent replacements have been named.
Strategic pivot: The company is reorienting around Gemini Predictions, a prediction markets platform launched across all 50 U.S. states in December 2025 under a CFTC Designated Contract Market license. The Winklevoss twins have described a “super app” vision combining crypto trading, a credit card, and prediction markets.
The crypto industry’s AI layoff wave
Gemini’s 30% reduction is the largest single-round cut at a major crypto exchange in 2026, but it is part of a broader pattern.
Algorand Foundation cut 25% of its workforce this week, citing the “rise of AI” alongside market conditions. OP Labs laid off 20 employees, calling it a “narrowing of focus.” Kraken shelved its IPO plans amid declining volumes. Across the broader tech sector, over 55,900 workers have been affected by 171 layoff events in 2026, according to TrueUp, with AI cited as a factor in roughly 20% of cases.
The question that applies to Gemini as much as to any of these companies is whether AI is genuinely replacing the work these employees did, or whether “AI transformation” has become the most socially acceptable way to announce cost cuts in a difficult market.
In Gemini’s case, the 40% code-change figure is specific and measurable — more concrete than the vague AI framing used by many peers. But a company that reported a Q4 net loss of $140.8 million, is exiting three continents, has lost three C-suite executives in a single day, and faces multiple class-action securities lawsuits is doing far more than optimizing for AI productivity. It is fighting for survival.
The earnings call at 8:30 AM ET today will be the first test of whether “Gemini 2.0” is a strategy or a slogan.
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