Axie Infinity Developer Trims Workforce by 21% To Prepare for ‘2025 Hypergrowth’

• Sky Mavis has teased the production of a new Axie Infinity game.
• Axie Infinity has processed over $4.3 billion in trading volumes since launching in 2018.
• AXS is trading up at $8.17 with a market cap of $1.25 billion following the news.

Sky Mavis, the company behind one of Web3 gaming’s greatest success stories, Axie Infinity, has announced a round of layoffs that are “unrelated” to its finances but instead to “sharpen” its focus in a bid for hypergrowth in 2025.

Axie Infinity Layoffs

According to Trung Nguyen, co-founder and CEO of Sky Mavis, the company is making a “shift in priorities” and is set to fire 21% of its staff.

Though Axie Infinity’s dwindling trading volumes and floor prices would be a logical reason as to why one-fifth of the staff, Nguyen is adamant that it has nothing to do with revenues or finances.

“I want to be absolutely clear: this decision is not related to the company’s budget or financial health. Instead, it is a strategic move that allows for a sharper focus and positioning Sky Mavis for hypergrowth in 2025 and beyond.“

The number of staff Sky Mavis has on hand varies between sources. A 2023 interview  suggests they had 250 on the team, though other sources  point to somewhere around or just under 200 people on staff as of 2024.

In 2021, Axie Infinity was posting daily trading volumes in the tens of millions. This figure fell off a cliff in early 2022 and has rarely exceeded $100,000 since.

New Priorities

In Nyugen’s post, he explains that the move is a bid to free up resources despite what he describes as a year of “valuable growth and evolution.”

Instead, it’s about time for Sky Mavis to focus on Ronin, the marketplace, Web3 games publishing, and the creation of a “new Axie game.” According to Nguyen, the move is about “positioning Sky Mavis for hypergrowth in 2025 and beyond.”

Though markets are considerably bullish at the moment, the Axie Infinity token, AXS, has relished sturdy gains, climbing over 11% from a 24-hour low of $7.19 to a month-high of $8.17.