WeWork, Olive AI, Convoy, and Veev all filed for bankruptcy or shut down only weeks after raising more than a billion dollars in funding. The filing was fuelled by the great losses incurred by a tech start-up collapse, which the sector is only beginning to experience. These start-ups had initially postponed mass failure by cutting costs over the previous two years, but based on investor decisions, many of them are facing a shortage of time and money. Although private tech companies are not mandated to disclose business failures or sales, approximately 3,200 venture-backed U.S. companies went out of business this year, raising $27.2 billion in venture funding. An additional 87 companies on the Carta platform raised at least $10 million and have since shut down this year. One start-up that grew rapidly in the past, Hopin, sold its main business for a very low price after having raised over $1.6 billion. Furthermore, the financial technology start-up Plastiq, the real estate start-up Zeus Living, and the scooter company Bird all experienced failure after raising large sums of investment. Venture capital firms have suggested that this year has been the most difficult for start-ups in at least a decade. Although failure is seen as par for the course, investors expect the losses to be quite extensive due to the enormous amount of invested cash over the last decade. Despite the gloomy forecast for tech start-ups, companies dedicated to helping founders close down their business have become popular following the wave of recent failures.
