AI21 cuts over 60% of staff, shifts focus to Maestro platform

AI21 Labs, the Israeli AI company once positioned as a serious contender in the large language model race, is slashing its workforce by more than 60%. The company is cutting approximately 110 of its 180 employees, leaving a skeleton crew of around 70 people focused almost entirely on a single product: its AI agent management platform called Maestro.

The restructuring comes after acquisition talks with AI cloud provider Nebius collapsed. Instead of a buyout, the two companies settled on a commercial partnership reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars. For a company valued at $1.4B just two years ago, that’s a pretty dramatic change of plans.

From language models to agent orchestration

AI21 is discontinuing the sale of its standalone language models entirely. Instead, it’s betting everything on Maestro, a platform designed to help enterprises optimize and manage AI agents. The remaining 70 employees will be concentrated on research and product development for the Maestro platform.

The Nebius deal that wasn’t

AI21 was reportedly in acquisition discussions with Nebius, the AI cloud infrastructure company. Those talks fell apart, and rather than walking away empty-handed, the two companies structured a commercial partnership valued in the tens of millions of dollars.

AI21 has raised roughly $700M across multiple funding rounds. Its investors are reportedly still holding out hope for a multi-billion-dollar exit.

The company also signed a separate contract with Wix, the website-building platform, which plans to base parts of its operations on Maestro. Between the Nebius and Wix deals, AI21 has secured contracts totaling tens of millions of dollars.

What this means for investors and the AI market

AI21 raised $700M and earned a $1.4B valuation in 2023. Now it’s cutting more than half its staff and abandoning the core product that attracted much of that investment.

For AI21’s existing investors, the calculus now depends entirely on whether Maestro can gain enough enterprise traction to either attract a buyer at a premium or generate standalone revenue that justifies the accumulated $700M in funding. The Wix partnership is a promising signal, but one or two enterprise contracts don’t make a platform business.

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