Maju Kuruvilla, Bolt’s CEO, speaks during a summit in March 2023.
Theo Wargo/Getty Images for BoF
The company conducted the layoff round, its second of the year, during the first week of December, Bolt spokesperson Stephanie Tan told SFGATE on Thursday. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the latest cut hit more than 100 employees. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have independent newsrooms.)
“As we evolve, we recognize the need for an operating model optimized for sustainable growth and efficiency,” Tan wrote in a statement. “To achieve that, we made the difficult but important decision to reduce layers and roles across the company.”
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The sweeping layoffs mark the depths of Bolt’s fall from a dramatic high in late 2021 and early 2022, when, according to Crunchbase, the company raised almost $750 million in a four-month stretch. Those investment rounds put Bolt’s valuation at $11 billion.
But in January 2022, just weeks after closing a $355 million fundraising deal, co-founder and CEO Ryan Breslow stepped down. He wrote on Twitter that he made the decision to replace himself with Bolt’s then-chief operating officer, Maju Kuruvilla.
The following May, the New York Times published an investigation into Bolt and Breslow. Employees told the outlet that Bolt had “overstated its technological capability and misrepresented the number of merchants using its service,” and that the company had oversold its customer contracts in presentations to investors.
At the time, Bolt had about 800 employees, the Times reported. Now, about a year and a half later and after multiple layoff rounds, reports suggest it’s down to about half that number, though Tan declined to comment on raw numbers.
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Though no longer CEO, Breslow is still the chairman of Bolt’s board, and his four-day workweek advocacy has proved lasting; the company still advertises it among their “perks of the job.”
Hear of anything happening at Bolt or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.