Hasan Sukkar has announced he’s stepping down as CEO of the hyped AI sales agent startup 11x.
On Monday evening, Sukkar said in a LinkedIn post that he would be moving into a non-executive chairman role at the company, and CTO Prabhav Jain would be taking over as chief.
“In our early stage, we needed 0-1 energy, fast-paced execution, and incredibly high velocity to define a new category,” said Sukkar on LinkedIn.
“Now as we scale, we require operational rigour, technical depth and a scalable culture to support our enterprise customers. This transition optimises our leadership for the challenges ahead.”
Founded in late 2022 in London, 11x fast became one of the hottest startups in European tech, building a set of agentic AI tools or “automated digital workers”, which it said could take on repetitive tasks, like scheduling emails or even taking phone calls with customers.
Andreessen Horowitz led a $50m Series B into the startup in September 2024 — and the company swiftly announced it was relocating to San Francisco. It followed on from a $24m Series A just months earlier, from investors including Benchmark, Project A, 20VC and Visionaries Club.
Not smooth sailing
In March, multiple current and former employees told Sifted that 11x had struggled with customer and employee churn, with a “toxic” workplace culture that encouraged 80-hour weeks, saw some sleep in the office overnight and dozens of workers at all levels leave the company.
Insiders say the company’s relentless approach compounded performance issues, with sources telling Sifted at one point more than 70% of customers had closed or paused their accounts.
Sukkar disputed the accuracy of the numbers quoted. In a statement, he added: “We work with urgency and hold ourselves to a high bar — because the mission demands it.”
Investors including A16z, Benchmark and Project A all affirmed their support for 11x on social media at the time.
“The decision was made after deep discussions with the board and leadership teams about what 11x needs for scale,” 11x said in a statement.
“Hasan’s entrepreneurial strengths have helped launch and define the Digital Worker category. Now, as the platform scales to serve enterprises globally, Prabhav’s technical leadership and operational excellence make him the ideal CEO to lead the company forward.”
11x added: “Under Prabhav’s technical leadership over the past six months, our product has made significant strides, including a complete re-platforming that has delivered substantial improvements for our customers.”
Jain joined 11x as CTO in August 2024, and was previously head of engineering at US fintech Brex — which acquired CommonLounge, a startup he founded and was CEO at, in 2020.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/11x-ceo-steps-down/
