Optimove Lays Off 10% of Staff as AI Rewrites the Rules of How It Operates

Key Points

• Optimove has let go of roughly 10% of its global workforce, a move the company frames as a deliberate rebuild around artificial intelligence, not a cost-cutting retreat.
• CEO and founder Pini Yakuel confirmed the decision on LinkedIn, stating that Optimove is cutting from a position of financial health, not survival.
• The announcement comes just two months after Optimove acquired CRM provider Smartico, and places the company alongside Gambling.com Group and Bragg Gaming in a pattern of double-digit cuts framed around AI across the iGaming sector.

Optimove, the CRM and marketing platform for the iGaming industry which is famous for Positionless Marketing, has fired one out of every ten employees. The news was put on LinkedIn by the company’s CEO and founder Pini Yakuel on 17 June. He made sure that he did not put this in a bad light. It was, in his telling, a company choosing what it wants to be.

That distinction carries real weight. A company shedding 10% of its people while calling itself financially healthy and growing is not telling the same story as one bleeding revenue. Yakuel leaned into this directly. The restructure, he said, is about rethinking how Optimove works across the board, not just dressing up its product with new features.

“The AI era is changing what it takes to build and lead a great software company,” he said. “It is no longer enough to add AI features to a product. The strongest companies will be the ones that rethink how they work, how they build, how they make decisions, how they serve customers, and how they structure their teams.”

The Smartico Timing

To read this announcement properly, you need to go back two months. In April, Optimove bought Smartico, a gamification-led CRM provider that Yakuel called “the competitor that stood out,” crediting it as the first to blend gamification and CRM marketing in a way the iGaming industry picked up and ran with.

The deal kept both companies separate, with Smartico’s founders holding full control over strategy, product direction, and daily operations. Buying Smartico was about gaining something. The layoffs, two months on, are about cutting something loose, specifically the headcount that does not fit the shape Optimove is now building toward.

Taken together, the two moves sketch out a company that is actively pulling itself into a new shape, not just stacking on growth. One thing nobody has answered yet: does the 10% figure apply only to Optimove’s own staff, or does it pull in Smartico employees who technically sit inside a separate operating entity? No coverage has touched this, and Optimove has not said.

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

For iGaming marketers who depend on Optimove daily, the worry is not abstract. Cut one in ten people at any vendor and the odds are good that some of them were sitting on client accounts, managing integrations, or keeping support queues moving. That kind of uncertainty does not disappear just because the company’s finances are in good shape.

This is not a theoretical risk. EGT Digital wired Optimove’s platform into its X-Nave system in July 2025. EveryMatrix launched a real-time data integration with Optimove the month before that. Both partnerships were still finding their feet when the cuts landed. Operators running either integration have every right to ask whether the people who built those connections are still at their desks.

Yakuel’s message to clients was warm, though it stayed at altitude: “This change is about making Optimove faster, sharper, and even more innovative. You will see us lead with AI not only in our product, but also in the way we operate, support you, and help you navigate your own challenges and opportunities in this new era.”

Fine words. The problem is that operators are not asking about the next era. They are asking about next Monday, specifically who picks up the phone when something breaks.

For the staff who remain, Yakuel promised investment in AI tools and training to help them “shape the next version of this company.” What that training actually involves has not been described. The gap matters, because there is a familiar trap here: employees who pick up real AI skills become attractive to other companies, and nothing binds them to stay long enough for Optimove to see a return on what it put in.

Three Companies, One Pattern

Optimove did not arrive at this decision alone. Gambling.com Group confirmed in May that it was cutting 25% of its workforce, with CEO Kevin McCrystle describing it as “resetting team structures, roles, and processes to fit an AI-first world.” That announcement came with a 43% drop in adjusted EBITDA and flat revenue sitting alongside it, which made the financial strain considerably harder to ignore than in Optimove’s case.

Bragg Gaming moved first, announcing a 12% cut in January and setting out a goal of becoming a fully AI-first company by 2027. Three separate iGaming businesses, three rounds of double-digit cuts, all pointing at the same thing. Read the announcements side by side and the language starts to blur: smaller teams, flatter structures, machines picking up the work that people used to carry.

What sets Optimove apart from the other two is where it stands when it swings the axe. Gambling.com was watching profitability slide. Bragg was posting widening losses. Optimove, by its own telling, is growing. It makes it more difficult to dismiss as a simple matter of finances cloaked in strategic terms. A profitable firm which cuts back on its workforce must either believe it will be able to do more work with fewer people, or is positioning itself for something completely different.

What Is Still Unknown?

A lot of ground remains uncovered. Optimove has never published its total headcount, so the actual number of people let go sits behind the percentage with no figure attached. The AI training programme has been mentioned but not described. Whether Smartico employees are inside or outside the 10% has not been confirmed. Neither EGT Digital nor EveryMatrix has said anything publicly about what the cuts mean for their integrations.

Yakuel ended his LinkedIn post with something you do not often see in these announcements, a direct message to the people walking out: “To the people leaving Optimove: thank you. You helped shape this company. We are grateful for what you gave, and we will do our best to support you through this transition.”

Most restructuring statements stay locked on strategy and leave the human cost sitting in the margins. Yakuel broke that pattern. Addressing departing staff as a group, by name, in public, signals that he understood exactly what this announcement cost the company’s reputation and decided to face it rather than smooth it over.

Expert Analysis

The real question for iGaming marketers is not whether Optimove’s AI pivot holds up on paper. It is whether the service holds up while the company is still mid-rebuild. Restructures punch holes, and those holes almost always open in client-facing teams before they show up anywhere else. Optimove carries a strong product and a deep client roster, but the next two quarters will do the actual telling: can a leaner operation keep the account coverage its partners depend on? Operators with live integrations should not wait for something to go wrong before asking for written clarity on their support arrangements. The time to ask is now.