> Winklevosses Say Job Cuts at Gemini Exchange Reach 30%

Gemini Space Station Inc.’s workforce reduction has reached roughly 30% since the start of the year following layoffs, with the crypto exchange saying Thursday it is deploying artificial intelligence tools to increased productivity. The firm lost more than $500 million last year.

As of March 1, the company, founded by billionaires twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, employed about 445 people, Gemini said in a shareholder letter. The New York-based firm said it wasn’t providing an operating outlook for 2026 while releasing fourth-quarter results.

Earlier this year, Gemini said it was eliminating as much as a quarter of its staff and exiting the UK, European Union and Australia entirely. It also parted with its chief operating officer, chief financial officer and chief legal officer. It then quietly let go of additional US staff beyond the 25% workforce reduction, Bloomberg reported earlier.

Gemini is a relatively small crypto exchange, with less than 1% of total global market share, per researcher Kaiko, in a market where scale increasingly matters. Like other crypto exchanges, it’s also navigating rough waters as Bitcoin price has plummeted by more than 40% since hitting an all-time high in October. Many traders have stayed on the sidelines amid wide price swings and global uncertainty. Crypto.com recently cut 12% of its staff, citing a need to adapt its business to rising AI capabilities.

Coinbase Global Inc., the largest US crypto exchange, has about 11 times more staffers, or 4,951 employees. Coinbase’s daily trading volume in the last 24 hours was nearly 42 times higher than Gemini’s, according to crypto data tracker CoinGecko.

Gemini went public in September, several weeks before the latest crypto downturn hit.

Fourth-quarter revenue increased almost 40% to around $60 million from the year-earlier period, while its loss widened to $140.8 million from $27 million. For the full year, Gemini posted a loss of $585 million, including unrealized losses on the value of crypto assets .

The shares of Gemini rose as much as 11% in after-hour trading. The stock is down nearly 40% so far this year on concerns over Gemini’s timeline to reach profitability. Citigroup Global Markets analyst Peter Christiansen cut his recommendation on the crypto exchange to sell from neutral earlier this week.
“We have increasing concerns the company will likely be challenged to scale profitably within a reasonable time frame for equity investors and remain competitively relevant (where network effects are critical), particularly in challenged crypto environments,” Christiansen wrote.

With trading volume under pressure and expenses high, the twins are signaling a bid to stake the company’s future on newer ventures. Internally, Gemini is increasingly focusing on its fledgling synergy platform, marking a pivot to a red-hot but crowded space with controversies of its own. An investor sued Gemini in March alleging it failed to disclose plans for a business pivot to prediction paradigms.

Commenting on the company’s sunk stock price, the Winklevoss brothers — former Olympic rowers — wrote in the shareholder letter that they are far from feeling dispirited.

“As rowers, losing a race provided invaluable feedback on the changes you need to make in order to win,” they wrote. “The path to the Olympics is paved in lost races and the invaluable learning that comes from them. So we welcome the feedback and love the challenge.”



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