Getaround, a company that facilitates car rentals, is laying off 30% of its North American staff, the company announced in a blog post Wednesday. The news comes almost four months after Getaround ditched its San Francisco headquarters.
The layoff round, set to impact dozens of workers, is part of Getaround’s attempt to “lengthen its cash runway and accelerate its path to profitability,” a Thursday press release declared. The company has been unprofitable for years.
Getaround’s recent layoffs come just over a year after the company gave pink slips to 10% of its staff. The company had 283 workers at the finish of 2022, per an SEC filing. A spokesperson declined to notify SFGATE how many workers were impacted by the new layoff round but declared the cuts were across the company’s North American teams.
“Our focus on profitability and sustainable business growth necessitated this difficult workforce reduction program,” Getaround CEO Sam Zaid wrote in the Thursday press release. Getaround lost $27 million from July 2023 through September 2023, according to its most recent financial filing with the SEC.
The layoff puts Getaround in a large group of companies that went public through special purpose acquisition company mergers and finished up laying off huge chunks of staff. Getaround’s Dec. 2022 merger, known as a SPAC deal, valued the company at $1.2 billion. As soon as it closed, though, the company’s stock tanked — Getaround’s market cap now fluctuates around $24 million.
In a December filing with the Securities and Exmodify Commission, the company declared it was no longer paying rent for its headquarters lease at 55 Green St. in San Francisco and that it had paid $3.6 million to the office’s landlord as part of a lease termination offer on Oct. 19. Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported the lease had been set to run through 2029, and that the company still operates a tiny office in Oakland. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
Getaround is now a “remote first” company, the filing declared.
The company is competing in a crowded market. Rental car stalwarts like Hertz, Alamo and Avis still offer services in the Bay Area, and newer, tech-focutilized companies have pushed into the fray, as well. Turo provides a very similar service to Getaround, Kyte delivers cars across the city and Uber has added car rentals to its popular, dominant platform.
In the blog post first announcing the layoffs, Getaround’s CEO wrote that laid-off workers will receive up to 12 weeks of severance pay, as well as a promo code for $500 in Getaround credit.
Hear of anything happening at Getaround or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.
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