Eclipse Appoints New CEO as Neel Somani Faces Sexual Misconduct Accusations

2024-05-15 22:21:49

Tanzeel Akhtar

Last updated:

May 16, 2024 02:21 EDT | 1 min read

Eclipse Labs founder and CEO Neel Somani has officially stepped down and been replaced by Vijay Chetty “effective immediately” following allegations of sexual misconduct.

In a social media post, Eclipse Labs announced the departure of Somani and Chetty’s promotion from chief growth officer to CEO.

“Chetty brings over a decade of crypto-native experience to the helm, having held leadership positions at Uniswap Labs, dYdX Trading, and Ripple Labs in addition to his investing experience at BlackRock,” said the firm via the social media platform X.

Operational update on behalf of Eclipse Labs: "Effective immediately, Vijay Chetty will be named CEO of Eclipse Labs, taking over for Neel Somani who is departing. Chetty will be elevated from Chief Growth Officer and will assume all responsibilities of CEO.

— Eclipse 🌑 (@EclipseFND) May 16, 2024

On Friday, Somani took to the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to address the allegations stating he is innocent and prepared to defend his reputation. Last week, Somani said he would be “temporarily reducing” his role as the public face of the firm and stated that he is innocent and prepared to defend his reputation.

The allegations have not yet been proven in court.

Eclipse Labs is a layer-2 blockchain scaling project built on Ethereum with headquarters in San-Francisco. In March, Eclipse Labs announced it had raised $50 million in funding round to fuel the launch of its solution for scaling the Ethereum network.

The funding round was co-led by Placeholder and Hack VC, bringing the total capital raised to $65 million. Other notable participants in the round included Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Maven 11, DBA, Apollo-managed funds, and Fenbushi Capital.

Eclipse Labs announced it is hiring for several roles, including a Growth Engineer, Marketing Lead, and People Operations Manager, with a preference for candidates based in the Bay Area.

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