The company has raised $185.3 million in funding so far and has had a tumultuous year including multiple rounds of layoffs.
Quirky CEO Ben Kaufman delivered the message to New York-based employees at a meeting and remote employees via a memo seen by Business Insider.
“In an attempt to preserve our employees’ jobs and the future of the Company, we along with our investors have been actively pursuing several opportunities to raise the capital needed to maintain our business and avoid having to make staff reductions,” he writes. ”Unfortunately, we have not been able to obtain sufficient funding to enable us to continue to operate our business at the current levels of staffing.”
“Therefore, we must conduct a further reduction-in-force, which includes employees who work remotely and report into our New York City office.”
The company’s fundraising has been complicated, in part because Quirky has two businesses: Its invention platform and the smart-home platform Wink. Because of the lack of synergy between the two businesses — both of which are unprofitable — Quirky tried to sell Wink earlier this year. Those efforts ended after the company had to do an expensive nationwide recall of its Wink products because of a “completely preventable” security error.
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