Deniz 
After a ten-year tenure, Michael Gronager, co-founder and CEO of blockchain analytics unicorn Chainalysis, has stepped back from his leadership post.
Gronager has stepped back and been on “personal leave” since Sept. 25 for “a personal issue,” a Chainalysis spokesman verified. Gronager’s intentions for returning and, if such exist, when are yet unknown. The spokesman refused to offer particular information.
Acting as temporary CEO, Sari Granat, Chainalysis’s president and chief operational officer, said that from IHS Markit, an information services company that year underwent a merger with S&P Global, Granat joined Chainalysis in April 2022. Granat said she has “a deep understanding of our business from running various functions, including sales, finance, human resources, legal, and operations,” adding that she is “closely collaborating” with Jonathan Levin, another co-founder and chief strategy officer, on running the company.
Gronager’s unexpected personal absence follows one week following media interviews at Token2049 in Singapore. Whether his absence is connected to health problems, internal company conflict, or other causes is unknown.
As the company intended to withdraw from the commercial market and concentrate on government contracting, which accounted for roughly 70% of its income at the time, Chainalysis laid off some 150 employees, or rather more than 15% of its 900-person crew, last October. This round of job losses tracked a drop of roughly 5% of the workforce from last February.
After revealing a $170 million Series F fundraising round headed by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Chainalysis was valued at $8.6 billion in May 2022. To now, the business has attracted more than $535 million overall.
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