Irenic Capital launches 'Save Snap Now' activist campaign with plan to 7x stock price to $26
Apr 1, 2026
Key Points
- Activist investor Irenic Capital launches 'Save Snap Now' campaign targeting a 7x stock price increase to $26 per share through cost cuts, AI-driven monetization, and governance reforms.
- Irenic calls for a 1,000-person layoff, roughly 20% of Snap's workforce, arguing AI can replace existing roles while the company stabilizes its equity compensation burden.
- The activist wants Snap to focus AI partnerships on major players like OpenAI and Anthropic rather than smaller deals like its $400 million Perplexity agreement.
Summary
Activist investor Irenic Capital has launched a public campaign to overhaul Snap, publishing a detailed plan at savesnapnow.com that targets a 7x increase in stock price to $26 per share. The push centers on cost discipline, monetization, and governance.
Workforce and equity grants
Irenic is calling for a 1,000-person layoff, roughly 20% of Snap's 5,261-person workforce. The pitch frames this as using AI to replace existing roles and empower top performers. The scale aligns with recent cuts at Oracle and Meta during their own transformations.
The underlying issue is Snap's stock compensation structure. Over roughly a decade, the company has issued equity grants equivalent to the entire company's value, frustrating long-term investors. Talent wars justify high equity grants when competing directly with Twitter, Meta, Instagram, and Reddit for engineers. Once the business stabilizes and the company can attract talent on salary alone, that logic weakens.
Monetization and AI partnerships
Irenic's monetization plan mirrors Meta's approach by using AI and machine learning to build better advertising tools. The specific asks include improving monetization across users, advertisers, and subscriptions, leveraging Snap's proprietary AI datasets, and focusing AI partnerships on larger players like Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Snap already signed a $400 million deal with Perplexity that included both cash and stock. The activist's recommendation to concentrate on larger AI players suggests this partnership may be opportunistic rather than strategic. Snap took cash when available and can swap partners later if needed.
Spectacles and governance
Irenic wants to spin off or shut down Spectacles, Snap's AR hardware division. Internal leaks over the past six months suggest a spin is already in the works.
The activist is also pushing governance reforms including one vote per Class A share, though broader details on board composition were not specified.
Snap stock rose 14% following the campaign's publication.