Pump.fun reportedly fires staff before token vesting, cutting employees from potential seven-figure payouts

Jul 31, 2026

Solana memecoin platform Pump.fun reportedly fired over 40 employees just before their token allocations were set to vest, denying at least one a potential seven-figure payout. Co-founder Noah Tweedale said the company "grew too quickly." The UK-incorporated firm, which has generated over $1.3B in revenue, is also on the FCA's warning list and has overdue financial filings.

Pre-vesting employee terminations

▪Pump.fun co-founder Noah Tweedale stated the layoffs were necessary because the company "grew too quickly" and needed to be "fast and rough."
▪Solana memecoin platform Pump.fun reportedly terminated over 40 employees in two waves in late March/early April and mid-July 2026.
▪The terminations stripped staff of their $PUMP tokens, with at least one former employee losing a potential seven-figure payout.
▪Terminated employees were compensated with one week of severance pay for each month of service.
▪The firings occurred shortly before employee token allocations were set to vest, with one employee reportedly fired one day before their vesting date.

Token vesting structure

▪Under the agreements, a quarter of employees' allocated PUMP tokens were scheduled to unlock in June 2026, one year after signing.
▪For one employee, the forfeited token allocation was valued at over $1 million at the time of the report.
▪Pump.fun employees signed token grant agreements in mid-June 2025.
▪At the time of reporting, the PUMP token was trading around $0.002, down approximately 79% from its 2025 peak of $0.0089.

Platform revenue metrics

▪Pump.fun has generated approximately $1.3 billion in lifetime revenue and continues to earn about $1 million per day.
▪Over 20.8 million tokens have been created on the Pump.fun platform.
▪The company's staff grew from three to nearly 100 employees in 2026 before the layoffs.

UK regulatory warnings

▪The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has placed Pump.fun on its warning list, and the company has blocked UK users since December 2024.
▪Pump.fun is incorporated in the UK as Baton Corporation Ltd.
▪Baton Corporation's financial accounts for the period ending September 30, 2025, were overdue by one month as of July 2026.

Legal and internal issues

▪In December 2025, former employee Jarett Dunn was sentenced to six years in prison for transferring about $2 million from a company wallet.
▪Pump.fun has previously faced lawsuits alleging it operated a "rigged" offering for investors and over its maximal extractable value (MEV) practices.