Sreeram Kannan is the founder and CEO of Eigen Labs, the company behind EigenLayer, and 22 of the 28 posts on its blog from January to mid-October 2026 carry an AI word in their titles. None carries a restaking word, a shift that followed Eigen Labs' launch of EigenCloud on top of EigenLayer in June 2025.
Eigen Labs' blog shows how fast the turn came. In the 12 months before EigenCloud, at least 18 of its 38 posts had restaking work in the title, or 47.4% of them. In the 12 months from the launch, that count fell to 2 of 51 (3.9% of the 51), while 32 of the 51 titles carried an AI word (62.7%).
Sreeram Kannan at a Glance
Item | Details |
Who he is | Founder and CEO of Eigen Labs |
Education | PhD in ECE at UIUC, then Berkeley and Stanford postdocs |
2024 raise | $100M Series B led by a16z crypto, February 2024 |
EigenLayer mainnet | April 2024, alongside EigenDA |
EigenCloud | Launched June 2025, with a $70M EIGEN buy by a16z crypto |
On Phemex | EIGEN perpetual delisted, spot pair on a delisting notice |
Who Is Sreeram Kannan?
Sreeram Kannan is an engineering academic turned founder who runs Eigen Labs as its CEO. He's also the EigenLayer founder in practice, since Eigen Labs built and launched the protocol. EigenLayer lets Ethereum stakers pledge the same ETH to secure other services. Eigen Labs then built EigenCloud on top of it in 2025. Phemex covers the underlying model in what restaking is and its future in DeFi.
The token tied to Kannan's work is EIGEN. Price trackers list it under the EigenCloud name, though EigenLayer keeps running as the restaking protocol and EigenCloud is the platform Eigen Labs built on top of it.
That split matters when you read Kannan's record, because the protocol he's known for and the product he's selling in 2026 are two different things.
Sreeram Kannan's Career
Kannan earned a PhD in electrical and computer engineering and a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Between 2012 and 2014 he was a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley and a visiting postdoc at Stanford, according to his University of Washington faculty page.
That page lists Kannan as an affiliate associate professor in Seattle and names the UW Blockchain Lab as his research page. Its awards list includes UIUC's Van Valkenburg award for an outstanding dissertation in 2013 and a teaching award from UW's electrical and computer engineering department in 2019.
EigenLayer first opened restaking on Ethereum mainnet in June 2023. In February 2024 Kannan's company announced a $100 million Series B round led by a16z crypto, the firm that came back for a second deal in 2025.
In April 2024 Kannan's team launched EigenLayer and EigenDA on mainnet, with EigenDA as the first service stakers could secure. EigenDA is a data availability layer for rollups, the market that Phemex's Celestia vs Avail data availability comparison breaks down.
Slashing, the penalty that can burn an operator's stake for broken commitments, went live on mainnet in April 2025. Eigen Labs called it the protocol's "feature-complete" milestone.
What Does EigenCloud Do?
EigenCloud lets developers run work off the blockchain and still prove it was done correctly, with EIGEN stake behind each service as the penalty for cheating.
Under Kannan, Eigen Labs introduced EigenCloud in June 2025 as a developer platform "Built atop EigenLayer and powered by the EIGEN token". It bundles EigenDA for data with two new pieces, EigenVerify for disputes and EigenCompute for running code offchain.
The launch post carried a second deal. It said a16z crypto had bought $70 million of EIGEN tokens from the Eigen Foundation, a token purchase separate from the 2024 Series B. The post quoted Sreeram Kannan as CEO of Eigen Labs, saying EigenCloud "expands the programmability of crypto and makes virtually anything verifiable onchain".
Kannan's research follows the product. In January 2026 he co-authored an arXiv paper on EigenAI with five others. It describes a system where any AI answer can be publicly audited and re-run, with stake on EigenLayer to enforce the result.
That idea of checkable output is the subject of Phemex's explainer on verifiable AI and cryptographic proofs.
How Did the EigenCloud Launch Change Eigen Labs?
The launch moved the public output of Kannan's company from restaking to AI. Its 2026 blog reads like an AI lab's, with titles such as "Agents Will Become Companies" and a run of Agentic by Eigen event recaps.
Method: the count covers all 137 post cards on Eigen Labs' blog index, dated April 2023 to September 2026, and sorts each title by its words. A title counts as restaking work when it carries one of nine words such as restaking or slashing. It counts as AI work when it carries one of six words such as AI or agent.
The word list misses some restaking posts, such as a September 2024 post introducing programmatic incentives, so the restaking shares are floors. The count measures only what Eigen Labs chose to write about, and it says nothing about EigenLayer's usage or the company's revenue.
The homepage has moved further, with a page title that calls Eigen Labs an "AI Research Lab" and no mention of EigenLayer or EigenCloud anywhere on it.
Kannan gave his reason in February 2026. He wrote that markets "shifted from valuing future infrastructure to valuing immediate revenue" and that the gap "has cost us". His answer was for Eigen Labs to ship consumer apps and agents itself without waiting for other builders. Agents are the bet, and Phemex's explainer on what AI agents are in cryptocovers the category.
What Has He Said About His EIGEN Tokens?
Kannan says he hasn't sold any, and he put it in writing in a February 2026 post signed as Founder & CEO of Eigen Labs. "I have not sold a single EIGEN token, and I have no intention of selling well past the full unlock in October 2027," he wrote.
That's a pledge in his own words, and nothing in the post lets an outsider check it.
The same post set network revenue as the company's 2026 goal. It pointed to ELIP-12, a governance proposal for EigenLayer. Under it, Kannan wrote, Eigen Labs is introducing "incentive and fee mechanisms designed to pass value from EigenCloud activity to the EIGEN token used to operate EigenLayer".
Proposals like ELIP-12 are how the protocol changes its rules, and Phemex's explainer on on-chain and off-chain blockchain governance covers how such proposals work.
How to Trade Around EigenCloud on Phemex
You can't trade an EIGEN perpetual on Phemex, because Phemex has delisted it. Phemex has also announced that EIGEN/USDT spot will be delisted at a later date, and margin trading on the pair ended in mid-October 2026.
EigenLayer's restaking started with staked ETH, and the ETH perpetual is listed on Phemex. EIGEN's spot pair closed at 0.2527 USDT at the mid-October close.
Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the founder of EigenLayer?
Sreeram Kannan founded Eigen Labs, the company that built EigenLayer and launched it on Ethereum mainnet in April 2024. He's Eigen Labs' CEO, and his February 2026 post is signed Founder & CEO of Eigen Labs.
What happened to EigenLayer?
EigenLayer still runs as the restaking protocol, with slashing live on mainnet since April 2025. In June 2025 Eigen Labs launched EigenCloud on top of it, and price trackers list the EIGEN token under the EigenCloud name.
What does EigenLayer do?
EigenLayer lets Ethereum stakers restake their ETH to secure other services, called AVSs, which operators run. An operator who breaks a service's rules can lose stake through slashing, and EigenLayer stake also backs EigenCloud's offchain services.
Is EigenLayer dead?
None of the 137 titles on Eigen Labs' blog announces a shutdown. Kannan's February 2026 post calls EigenLayer protocol-complete with slashing and redistribution, though the blog has carried no restaking title in 2026.
Is Sreeram Kannan selling his EIGEN tokens?
Kannan says he isn't. In a February 2026 post he wrote that he had not sold a single EIGEN token. He added that he had no intention of selling well past the full unlock in October 2027, a public pledge in his own words.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
