decrypt.co
Brave Software, the developer of the privacy-focused Brave Browser, has laid off 27 employees across different departments, according to TechCrunch. This is a notable portion of its staff with PitchBook estimating the company is made up of 191 employees.
Brave did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment on details about the recent layoffs.
This comes just 10 months after Brave cut 9% of its workforce. The company explained at the time that it was the result of “cost management in this challenging economic environment.”
Brave is a free web browser with a focus on privacy. One of its key features is blocking advertisements and trackers, while giving users the opportunity to opt-in to certain advertising in exchange for its native crypto token, the Basic Attention Token (BAT).
It was founded in 2015 by Brian Bondy and Brendan Eich, the co-founder Firefox and the Mozilla Corporation. Within two years, Brave has garnered a million monthly active users and raised $36 million through the public sale of its BAT.
With a focus on privacy, the product has also branded itself as a crypto-native browser.
The browser has its own self-custody wallet which allows users to buy and sell tokens without leaving the integrated Brave Wallet. When the feature was added in 2023, tokens available to trade included Ethereum, Solana, USDC, and Brave’s BAT which is earned by viewing ads or being tipped by other users.
In February this year, the company enabled users to remove these tokens from their local machines into a self-custody Solana wallet, without needing a centralized exchange.
At the time of writing, BAT is down 91% from its all-time high achieved in November 2021, from $1.90 to $0.17, according to CoinGecko.
The privacy-focused browser also started to embrace AI by creating its own in-browser assistant. Leo AI, launched last November, was built to translate, analyze, and rewrite pages. It’s since been updated to be Bring Your Own Model, allowing users to integrate their own AI models into the browser.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.