Yuga Labs, the $4.6 billion startup behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club and other NFT projects, announced Friday that it has restructured the company and eliminated some roles as a result, resulting in layoffs.
In a team email that was also shared public, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre said the startup had taken on too much internally and that the company needed to refocus while tapping more external partners.
Alegre said he had been working on many successful projects this year, such as the buzzy Dookey Dash game, the twelveFold generative art pieces via Bitcoin Ordinals, and collaborations with BAPE and Gucci. However, he also said that some product launches have fallen short.
Yuga Labs has already made moves in this area with Otherside, its upcoming metaverse game. In September, the company announced various technical and creative partnerships for the game, and on Thursday, the company announced a strategic investment in Hadean, a space computing startup.
Alegre said Yuga is 'going all-in on our Otherside strategy' and that all ongoing digital content from the company will tie into the Metaverse platform. He also said that his teams focus on the NFT avatar project Meebits and the 10KTF digital apparel project will be folded into Otherside.
The CEO also acknowledges that Yuga hasn't been 'building in public' with Otherside as much as it planned to, but said that further updates on the Metaverse platform will be coming. In addition, he highlighted broader industry headwinds that have affected many firms building in crypto, not to mention more economic difficulties.
The first startup of Yuga Labs was founded in early 2021 and was a significant success with the creation of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an Ethereum NFT profile picture initiative that quickly became the most prominent collection in the space. Bored Ape NFTs sold for millions-dollar prices, and were snatched up by celebrities, amidst broader NFT market hype.
In March 2022, the firm raised $450 million at a valuation of $4 billion, a significant valuation for CryptoPunks NFT IP from Larva Labs and Meebits. The cryptocurrency ApeCoin, inspired by Bored Ape, launched in the same time, and a NFT land sale for Otherside broke sales records in late April 2022.
As demand for NFT collectibles has plummeted over the last year, prices for Bored Apes and other 'blue chip' NFTs have fallen sharply, as has the price of ApeCoin. Yuga Labs grew substantial on the back of the Bored Ape buzz, but now the company is now slimming down as it seeks a sustainable model.