# StarkWare AI Lead Abdel Bakhta Leaves to Focus on AI Safety By Sonny Jang Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/people/39459 Published: 2026-10-24T00:16:19.000Z Updated: 2026-10-24T00:16:19.000Z Section: People > Bakhta said mathematics and cryptography will matter in AI safety. StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said ZK STARK and Starknet may also contribute. Abdel Bakhta, StarkWare’s Applied AI & Verifiable Intelligence lead, said Oct. 23 he is leaving the company to focus on AI safety, which he called one of the most important challenges facing humanity. Bakhta said the field had occupied his thoughts over the past year. He said mathematics and cryptography will play important roles in addressing AI safety. StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson welcomed Bakhta’s next step and said he believes ZK STARK and Starknet could also contribute to AI safety. On Sept. 16, StarkWare joined Yukon Research and Eigen Labs in launching a challenge that invited developers, researchers and AI agents to improve transaction pinning and subset selection for quantum-safe Bitcoin. The challenge sought to [lower the cost of a quantum-safe Bitcoin build](). ## Links in this article - [lower the cost of a quantum-safe Bitcoin build](https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/24443)