Muneeb Ali stepped down as Hiro's chief executive officer on Feb. 3, 2022, moving into a newly created Executive Chairman role while Chief Operating Officer Alex Miller took the CEO title, citybiz reported2. Ali simultaneously became chief executive of Trust Machines, a new, independent entity in the Stacks ecosystem that citybiz said would build Bitcoin applications and support other application teams at early stages. Trust Machines launched with $150 million in funding, according to the same report.
18 CEO exits on the record in 2022
CEO exits CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2022: 18
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 7 |
| 2020 | 9 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 18 |
| 2023 | 11 |
| 2024 | 20 |
| 2025 | 20 |
| 2026 | 18 |
Layer 1s & Infrastructure led CEO exits in 2022, with two
CEO exits CryptoLately has verified in 2022, by the sector of the company
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Layer 1s & Infrastructure | 2 |
| Institutional Custody & Asset Management | 2 |
| Trading Venues & Brokerage | 2 |
| Bitcoin & Mining | 2 |
| Capital Markets & Treasury | 1 |
| Wallets & Consumer Apps | 1 |
The move
Ali's own words framed the exit as a handoff built on a year of outsized growth. “In the past year, Hiro has achieved growth and hit milestones that were beyond even my expectations,” Ali said, now identified as Hiro's Executive Chairman. “From Bitcoin NFTs to unlocking the potential of Bitcoin's massive market cap through DeFi, the projects that our tools have enabled are actively helping the Bitcoin ecosystem to mature. I'm proud to be handing the day-to-day operations of Hiro to Alex, who has been a major driver behind our progress,” Ali said2. Hiro's own announcement said the leadership change had been "in the works since mid-2021." The new structure had already run in practice for three months, the announcement said, before the Feb. 3, 2022 titles changed publicly1.
Before and after at Hiro
Ali combined the CEO role at Hiro with building the broader Stacks ecosystem that Hiro's developer tools served. Hiro's blog post credited that period with growth. It cited zero to more than 350 million monthly API requests and more than 2,500 deployed Clarity smart contracts1. Ali kept working alongside Hiro after stepping down, rather than leaving the ecosystem behind. citybiz reported he would "continue to work with Hiro closely" even while running Trust Machines as a separate company2.
What came next
Ali moved again on Sept. 30, 2026, more than four years after the Hiro handoff, this time from Trust Machines into a different Stacks entity. Traders Union reported on Sept. 30 that Ali, then CEO of Trust Machines, had announced he would become the new chief executive of Stacks Labs3. The outlet said Ali, who co-founded Stacks in 2017, pointed to more than five years of the project operating live. He cited the launch of Bitcoin staking as a reason for renewed optimism about the STX token.
Sources
- "Big Moves at Hiro — New Roles for Muneeb, Alex, and Diwaker," Hiro Systems, Feb. 3, 2022, https://www.hiro.so/blog/big-moves-at-hiro-new-roles-for-muneeb-alex-and-diwaker
- "Hiro Appoints Muneeb Ali As Executive Chairman And CEO OF Trust Machines," citybiz, Feb. 3, 2022, https://www.citybiz.co/article/212357/hiro-appoints-muneeb-ali-as-executive-chairman-and-ceo-of-trust-machines/
- Yulia Slavina, "Muneeb Ali: Named new CEO of Stacks Labs as firm advances Bitcoin staking," Traders Union, Sept. 30, 2026, https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMijAFBVV95cUxNLThwMTVPWlZpRktzUElkaWtnbHBFRUdhaERaSzNjdEFpcXVGWWZwdEVWcEhLMFVyWkpoMHRRVUR4djZvYTd5cUdkX0ZMT2o5azFRbmZ3MmUzdWdjT0dLZl9hUTlRMGZDR0NPVFRKVGwyU1VzRUZmX1RkRkoyWmNCYXJRdzJydWEyVWQyZg?oc=5