The company says it’s refocusing and prioritizing fewer initiatives that will have the biggest impact on customers and add value to the business.
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Sona, a workforce management platform for frontline employees, has raised $27.5 million in a Series A round of funding. More than two-thirds of the U.S. workforce are reportedly in frontline jobs, which might be anything from customer service and healthcare to retail environments and hospitality. But managing this vast workforce, ensuring roles are filled and […]
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Peloton, the exercise equipment maker and creator of online fitness classes, has announced that it’s laying off 15 percent of its workforce — 400 people — as CEO, president, and board director Barry McCarthy steps down after two years in the role.
McCarthy was previously CFO at Spotify and Netflix, and was coerced out of retirement in early 2022 when Peloton co-founder and then-CEO John Foley stepped down as part of a major cost-cutting effort that saw 2,800 employees laid off.
This is a developing story, refresh for updates.
Checkr, a 10-year-old startup that offers employee background checks and was last valued at $5 billion in April 2022, has laid off 382 employees as companies are not significantly hiring talent.
TechCrunch exclusively learned that Checkr conducted the layoffs across all departments and different levels on Tuesday. The San Francisco–based startup confirmed the layoffs in an email.
“In response to economic conditions that have impacted companies’ hiring, we made the difficult and painful decision to reduce the size of our team. This will allow us to operate more efficiently and ensure the long-term health of our business,” a Checkr spokesperson said in the statement.
The job cuts — which affected 32% of the company’s workforce — came nearly two years after Checkr announced the acquisition of Inflection, the startup behind GoodHire, a background-checking platform for small- and midsized businesses. At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported the deal was worth $400 million.
Backed by storied investors, including Durable Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research, Franklin Templeton, BOND and Coatue Management, Checkr lets companies do background checks by looking into driving and criminal records and basic identity confirmation of their potential employees. The startup offers an online form to let companies run those checks or use its API, which can be integrated within their hiring systems or onboarding software, including Workable and Zenefits.
Founded in 2014, Checkr counts Uber, Instacart, Netflix, Adecco, Airbnb and Coinbase among its key customers. Its customer base grew to more than tens of thousands of companies ranging from small and medium businesses to Fortune 500 employers in 2022. Initially, the startup was limited to Silicon Valley, but it expanded its presence beyond the Valley in 2016.
Checkr has given the affected employees a minimum of 10 weeks of severance and health insurance, as well as career and mental health support, the spokesperson said.
The startup did not answer questions about its runway and fundraising plans. To date, it has raised $679 million, with the last round of $250 million announced in September 2021.
Tesla is laying off thousands of workers as it tries to simultaneously cut costs and boost productivity, according to CEO Elon Musk.
The electric automaker is cutting “more than 10%” of its global headcount, Musk said in an email reported by Electrek and Bloomberg News. Tesla finished 2023 with over 140,000 employees, meaning the cuts could impact more than 14,000 people.
The layoffs come just two weeks after Tesla announced its first year-over-year sales drop in years, amid a wider cooling of EV sales. The company has warned investors that sales growth could be “notably lower” in 2024 than its stated goal of growing 50% each year. It’s also somewhat in between product cycles for the first time in a long time, with the expensive Cybertruck only just recently going into production and the popular Model Y entering its fourth year without any significant updates.
“As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,” Musk said in the email. Tesla’s growth, he said, has led to “duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas.”
“As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally. There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done. This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle,” Musk wrote.
Tesla shipped a record 1.8 million EVs in 2023. But the company spent much of the year slashing prices on its most popular models in an effort to counterbalance high interest rates and increased global competition. Tesla reportedly dropped — or at the very least, delayed — plans to build a lower-cost EV starting at around $25,000, opting instead to use the underlying platform being developed to power an alleged robotaxi that Musk said will debut on August 8th.
Hinge Health, a nine-year-old company that offers a digital solution to treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, cut approximately 10% of its workforce on Thursday, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The company said people who were laid off worked across various functions; according to employees posting on LinkedIn, some were engineers. Before the layoffs, Hinge had more than 1,700 employees, according to a LinkedIn estimate.
“As we continue to reimagine musculoskeletal care, we are also committed to building a long-term sustainable business,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “To accelerate our path to profitability, speed up decision making, and better focus our investments, we have made the decision to realign our organization. We are incredibly grateful for all our departing team members’ contributions and are focused on supporting them through this transition.”
The layoffs come as the company prepares for an IPO and aims to reach profitability.
The company didn’t comment on the timing for its IPO, but Hinge has said previously that it is not under pressure to hit the public markets this year since it still has $400 million of cash on its balance sheet.
Hinge was last valued at $6.2 billion in October 2021 when it raised a $400 Series E from Tiger Global and Coatue Management. The company has raised a total of $828 million, according to PitchBook data.
The company’s main competitor is General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures-backed Sword Health, which was last valued at $2 billion in November 2021.
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