Blockchain friendly Web Browser Brave lays off 27 Employees

Web browser and search startup Brave has slashed 14% of its staff across the different departments, Techcrunch announced on Wednesday.

A total of 27 employees, or roughly 14% of the workforce out of 191 people, were let go by the privacy-focused internet company Brave. Although the company acknowledged the layoffs, it provided no additional information regarding the total number of employees left or the reason behind them.

This is the second round of layoffs the startup has experienced in the last year. The company laid off 9% of its entire workforce in October 2023, and at that time, Brave explained that the cuts were required for cost management in this challenging economic environment.

The company has almost 80 million monthly active users, up from 65 million at the end of the previous year. Even though Brave is a popular alternative browser, especially in the cryptocurrency space, it is still quite small in comparison to rivals like Opera, Firefox, and Google Chrome, which is the industry leader in internet searches.

Brave has been incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into its product releases this year, having previously positioned itself as a "blockchain browser" and adding various features related to cryptocurrency.

In June, the firm integrated its Leo chatbot with its own search results. Without going to a search page, users could use the chatbot to find out the result of a sports match or get additional information about an article they are reading. Leo, the company's AI assistant, was released gradually across desktop, Android, iPad, and iPhone platforms.

According to Techcrunch, Brave has not disclosed the cost of developing and running these AI-focused features. The popular news outlet speculated that this cost may be the cause of the recent round of layoffs.

Brave announced a historic integration with the Solana blockchain on February 22, 2024. The company said a limited number of users will now be able to earn Basic Attention Token (BAT) rewards on-chain through the browser, with the option to receive their monthly earnings via a wallet that supports Solana. The Brave BAT rewards program is a unique form of advertising that lets browser users receive cryptocurrency in exchange for choosing to view the application's advertisements.

The Brave browser's native token, the Basic Attention Token (BAT), which users receive for viewing advertisements, is down 2.66% in the last 24-hours and trading at $0.1648, according to CoinMarketCap.

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