It’s definitely about AI enabled efficiency to some degree. Big internal push to measure and monitor how much people are using AI tools, people being stack ranked on token usage (more = = better). Big push to go to leaner teams so there is less difficulty in partitioning work.
Lots of competing teams fighting for scope in the same areas. Even before this didn’t make sense. At the very least they are hoping fewer people means less communications overhead.
But there is also truly psychotic fervor in AI thinking too. Meta is obviously poorly managed and they are doing the same here too. There is such a strong push and intense layoff fear, that people are chiefly focused on showing vast volume of output to justify their existence. Even if the code itself is unused or unwanted.
The email I received says "Due to recent changes in how we determine account eligibility, we are no longer able to support accounts for businesses with physical or residential addresses in these countries. As a result, we will be closing the Mercury account1 for xxx xxx, LLC on May 1, 2026."
So is this the end for Non-US founders? This was the only bank that offered accounts/fin service without being physically present.
we built VaultLeap because of this.
VaultLeap gives founders ACH and IBAN accounts that convert to stablecoin. You can move your funds onchain or convert back to USD/EUR bank account.
We charge lower fees than Wise and Mercury. Feel free to dm me on twitter @gregreveret for any questions