MEGA Cuts 20% of Staff, Pivots to AI Inference With $30M

MEGA, the organization formerly known as the MegaETH Foundation, has cut 20% of its staff and committed $30 million from its treasury to build first-party products, starting with a public AI inference marketplace planned for December 2026.

Co-founder Shuyao Kong confirmed the restructuring on November 13, 2026, following an extended period of internal reorganization. The cuts landed as the network MEGA was built to support lost most of its deposited capital.

Who left, who stayed, and where the money goes

The layoffs mainly affected staff working on early chain development, wallet development and ecosystem support. Those functions form the operational scaffolding of a young network: maintaining the base layer, making it usable, and recruiting outside projects.

The core system designers remain. The core founders and the core engineering team will stay intact through the transition, according to the restructuring details.

On the capital side, MEGA has set aside $30 million from its existing treasury for new products built on the MegaETH network. This is a reallocation of funds already on hand, not a fresh fundraise.

The first product is a public AI inference marketplace, scheduled to launch in December 2026. If the timeline holds, roughly one month will separate the restructuring announcement from the marketplace debut.

What does the pivot actually change?

MegaETH is an Ethereum Layer 2 network — a separate system that processes transactions off Ethereum's main chain and settles back to it, aiming to make activity faster and cheaper.

The restructuring shifts MEGA's posture from network steward to product builder. The organization now intends to become, in effect, a tenant in its own building, developing first-party applications that demonstrate what the underlying technology can do.

The rebrand from MegaETH Foundation to MEGA reflects that change. Dropping the network name from the organizational identity signals that the team views itself as more than a caretaker of a single chain.

MEGA has framed the strategy around what it calls "purified intelligence," an approach that leans on cryptography to make AI inference more trustworthy. At the same time, the organization is distancing itself from being categorized purely as an AI company.

An inference marketplace would, in principle, give buyers and sellers of that computing work a single venue to transact. MEGA's stated aim is to use MegaETH's technology to bring more competition and transparency to how inference services are provided.

Why the TVL decline forced the issue

MegaETH's total value locked peaked above $245 million in May 2026. It has since fallen to approximately $12 million, and by some recent readings even less — a decline of more than 95% from the high.

The MEGA token listed on exchanges on April 30, 2026. The TVL peak arrived shortly after listing, and the drawdown followed across the subsequent months, compressing the timeline between the token's debut and the network's capital flight.

What this means for token holders

The pivot cuts both ways for MEGA token holders. The $30 million commitment signals that leadership will spend real resources to find a use case that brings activity back to the network. An AI inference marketplace with traction would give MegaETH something it currently lacks: a user-facing reason to exist that the team directly controls.

The risks are symmetrical. A 20% staff reduction narrows the team at the exact moment it takes on a new product line. Ecosystem support was among the functions cut, which could make it harder to attract outside builders even if the marketplace succeeds.

For now, MEGA has made its wager: a smaller team, a $30 million budget, and a bet that AI inference can supply the purpose that general-purpose ecosystem building did not. The first test arrives in December 2026, when the marketplace is scheduled to go live.