Electric scooter company Bird files for bankruptcy

Electric scooter company Bird filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, marking the end to a difficult year for the micromobility unit that was once a venture capital darling.

Bird said in a release that it was entering “into a financial restructuring process aimed at strengthening its balance sheet and better positioning the company for long-term, sustainable growth.” The company will operate as normal, it said, as it works toward profitability.

“We remain focused on our mission to make cities more livable by using micromobility to reduce car usage, traffic, and carbon emissions,” interim CEO Michael Washinushi said in a statement. A spokesperson declined to comment outside of the press release.

It’s been a difficult year for Bird, which offers electric scooters for consumers to rent and ride around cities. Shares of the company were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in September after it failed to keep its market capitalization above $15 million for 30 consecutive days. Shares instead began to trade on the over-the-counter exchange, which is when trades occur via a broker-dealer network as opposed to a centralized exchange.

The bankruptcy news caps a tumultuous few months for Bird, whose founder and one-time CEO Travis VanderZanden left in June. Three month’s after his exit, Bird acquired rival Spin for $19 million—and promptly issued a round of layoffs to reduce redundancies.

Electric scooter rentals were once a trendy commodity, with investors pouring millions of dollars into various companies. Bird had paved the fastest trail ever to unicorn valuation (a $1 billion valuation) and raised hundreds of millions of dollars from VCs. It was eventually valued at $2.5 billion in 2019, two years after its launch. The company went public in 2021, but has struggled to reach profitability and had shed nearly all of its market value.

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