Electric scooter company Bird marked the end of a difficult year by filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday.
Bird said in a statement that it had entered “a financial restructuring process aimed at strengthening its balance sheet and better positioning the company for long-term, sustainable growth.” It was stated that the company will operate normally due to its efforts towards profitability.
“We remain focused on our mission to make cities more livable by using micromobility to reduce vehicle use, traffic and carbon emissions,” interim CEO Michael Washinushi said in a statement. A spokesman declined to comment beyond the press release.
It’s been a tough year for Bird, which offers electric scooters to consumers that they can rent and get around cities. The company’s shares were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in September after it failed to keep its market value above $15 million for 30 consecutive days.
The bankruptcy news caps a tumultuous few months for Bird, whose founder and former CEO Travis VanderZanden left in June. Three months after his departure, Bird bought rival Spin for $19 million and immediately implemented a series of layoffs to reduce layoffs.
Electric scooter rentals were once a popular product with investors pouring millions of dollars into various companies. Bird had paved the fastest path ever to a unicorn valuation ($1 billion valuation) and raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists. It eventually reached a valuation of $2.5 billion in 2019, two years after its launch. The company went public in 2021 but struggled to achieve profitability and lost almost all of its market value.