Mysten Labs has a new chief executive. Kevin Boon, who was president, is taking over from Evan Cheng as CEO of the company behind the Sui Layer 1 blockchain. Cheng announced the move in an Oct. 16 letter and in posts on X. Boon previously served as chief legal officer before becoming president. Cheng wrote that he had planned for this handover when he made Boon president.
Leadership shift
Cheng will stay at Mysten Labs as chief technology officer. He will also personally lead a new in-house AI business unit. He described the change as a way to make his own scope more manageable. The goal, he said, is to keep supporting Sui and Walrus while spending more time on technical leadership. That reads like a practical split of duties, though the timing still matters for a company trying to grow both its base chain and related products.
AI unit gets separate build
The AI unit will have its own engineering, product development and other functions. Cheng said this setup should reduce dependencies on the rest of Mysten. It is meant to follow the model of Mysten’s onchain finance business unit, which was set up over the summer. The new group will focus on agent-trust products and AI-native infrastructure.
Cheng’s stated aim is to let agents carry out tasks on their own while staying inside limits set by users. He said the products and services would be tied to Sui and Walrus. Walrus is Mysten’s decentralized storage protocol. It launched its mainnet in March 2025.
Agent trust work with Google Cloud
One project Cheng highlighted is Verifiable Agent Arbiter. Mysten announced it on Oct. 6 as an evidence layer being co-developed with Google Cloud. The idea is to let businesses prove that their AI agents acted within the authority they were given.
Under the planned design, detailed agent records stay in customer-controlled Google Cloud Storage. Cryptographic proofs are stored on Walrus and coordinated on Sui. Mysten said initial enterprise deployments are planned before broader availability.
For now, the CEO change puts Boon in charge of day-to-day leadership while Cheng narrows his focus. Whether the separate AI unit can move fast enough is an open question, but the structure gives Mysten a clearer line between its core network work and agent-focused products.
