Tom Brady’s NFT Startup Autograph is cutting nearly a third of its workforce
- Autograph is a star-studded NFT platform founded by retired NFL quarterback Tom Brady.
- This new round of layoffs comes months after the company laid off dozens of employees in December.
- The NFT market has cooled, with sales expected to fall 72% this year, according to one estimate.
Autograph, the star-studded NFT platform founded by retired NFL quarterback Tom Brady, has laid off about a third of its workforce, Insider has learned.
Up to 30 employees are affected, including top executives, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. Autograph employs 107 people, according to Linkedin data.
This new round of layoffs comes months after the company parted ways with dozens of employees in December, as Insider previously reported.
“Autograph is facing the same market challenges as other leading technology companies that have reduced staff,” a spokeswoman wrote in a statement confirming the new layoffs. “The company remains focused on building better products for fans with a strong and dedicated team.”
The NFT market has cooled considerably, with sales expected to fall by 72% this year, according to an industry estimate.
Brady, who co-chairs the board, launched Autograph in 2021 at the height of the NFT sports boom, along with founder Richard Rosenblatt and his son Dillon Rosenblatt, the company’s CEO.
A modern, blockchain-enabled version of trading cards, Autograph allows users to purchase non-fungible tokens featuring sports stars such as Tiger Woods, Naomi Osaka, Derek Jeter and Wayne Gretzky.
Los Angeles-based Autograph closed a $170 million Series B funding round in 2021 led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins with participation from former top Andreessen crypto partner Katie Haun, which raised a $1.5 billion fund in 2022 .
Haun, Arianna Simpson, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and Ilya Fushman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, joined a glittering board. Other board members include Eddy Cue, senior vice president of Apple, and Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, the recording artist known as the Weeknd. Chris Dixon, general partner in a16z, is a board observer.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of FTX, also joined the board in 2021 several months after Brady and his then-wife, Gisele Bundchen, invested in FTX.
