StarkWare’s Abdel announces departure to focus on AI safety

StarkWare core member Abdel announced his departure in a post reported on 2026-10-23, saying he would devote himself fully to AI safety research after the subject became his central focus over the past year.

Abdel described joining StarkWare as the best decision of his career. He called AI safety one of humanity’s most important challenges and said mathematics and cryptography could play important roles, arguing that the field needs more talent and resources.

Reflecting on his work with exploration teams, open-source projects and the Starknet developer ecosystem, he also mentioned StarkWare’s explorations in Bitcoin, privacy technology and AI. He said he remained optimistic about StarkWare and Starknet, describing their technology as leading and expressing confidence in the team and ecosystem.