AI21 Labs cuts more than 60% staff

AI21 Labs said on May 18 that it would lay off about 60% of its workforce and stop selling its language models as standalone products, according to company statements reported by Globes. The Israeli startup said 110 of 180 employees would leave as it redirects resources to software for optimizing AI agents, built around its Maestro system. The move narrows AI21’s focus after years of developing large language models and marketing them to enterprises. The company said the remaining staff would concentrate on research and product development tied to Maestro and related model algorithms. ### How big are the cuts, and what exactly is being shut down? Globes reported on May 18 that AI21 plans to cut 110 jobs from a workforce of 180, leaving roughly 70 employees. The company said it would discontinue sales of the models themselves, even as it continues work on the underlying algorithms that support its systems. (en.globes.co.il) AI21 said in a statement cited by Globes that “developments in the AI field” had forced it to reexamine the company’s activities. The company said the restructuring would let it focus on “AI agent optimization,” which it described as a core problem for enterprise customers deploying agents after the build phase. ### Why is AI21 centering the business on Maestro? (en.globes.co.il) AI21’s own product materials describe Maestro as software that optimizes accuracy, cost and latency for enterprise AI agents, with workflow visibility, validation and model-selection controls. A company blog post from April 28 said Maestro was designed to search across combinations of models, tools and execution policies to find workable operating points for production systems. (en.globes.co.il) The company’s website still presents both Maestro and Jamba among its products, but its recent research and blog output has leaned heavily toward agent orchestration, evaluation and deployment. AI21’s research page lists multiple 2026 posts on agentic evaluation, orchestration and infrastructure, while its March 2025 newsroom posts introduced Maestro as an enterprise planning and orchestration system. (ai21.com) ### What does this say about AI21’s business after its model push? AI21 said the models were “a major infrastructure for its expertise in the AI world” but “not a sufficient source of income on their own,” according to the statement published by Globes. The company said organizations were struggling not only to build AI agents, but to optimize them as business needs changed, and that this was the area where it would now commit all resources. (ai21.com) In August 2023, AI21 said it had raised $155 million at a $1.4 billion valuation, with investors including Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next and Amnon Shashua, and participation from Google and Nvidia. The company said at the time that total funding had reached $283 million; later company materials said a further Series C extension brought total funding to $336 million. (en.globes.co.il) ### Were there signs of pressure before this announcement? Reuters reported on Dec. 30, 2025, that Nvidia was in advanced talks to acquire AI21 Labs for as much as $3 billion, citing Calcalist. Nvidia declined to comment at the time, and AI21 did not immediately comment, according to the Reuters report. (ai21.com) Globes reported on May 18 that AI21 had been in acquisition talks with several companies and named Nebius as the most recent. Globes also reported that the company had signed agreements totaling “tens of millions of dollars” to deploy Maestro, including with Nebius, and partnership agreements with companies such as Wix. (money.usnews.com) ### What is AI21 still selling after the restructuring? AI21’s homepage says the company builds enterprise AI systems and still lists custom AI solutions, Maestro and Jamba among its offerings. But the company’s May 18 statement, as reported by Globes, said future effort would be directed to optimization solutions for agents based on Maestro rather than selling the models themselves. The next concrete marker will be whether AI21 updates its product pages, customer materials or newsroom posts to reflect the narrower strategy. (en.globes.co.il) As of May 18, the company’s website still carried active pages for Maestro, Jamba, research and enterprise solutions, while Globes reported the layoffs and the shift away from standalone model sales that same day. (ai21.com)