xcritical layoffs: xcritical Announces Layoffs After Hypergrowth Period

The company is also expected to shut down some projects and teams in conjunction with these cuts. xcritical’s stock peaked above $80 a share days after it went public last summer. After the most recent layoff announcement, xcritical’s stock jumped 15% Wednesday morning and then rose sharply again Thursday morning. On Wednesday, Chennapragada, the company’s chief product officer, announced on LinkedIn and Twitter that she would step down but stay on as an advisor to Tenev. In his Tuesday blog post, Tenev said “additional deterioration of the macro environment” since April’s layoffs had left the brokerage in a weaker position than he had anticipated. Another harbinger came in the weeks leading up to the layoffs when former employees saw representatives of other companies touring the Charlotte office,which xcritical opened in 2021, to decide whether to take over the space, they said.

xcritical has seen growth reverse as the pandemic boom in retail trading appeared to lose steam. Grow your revenue with all-in-one prospecting solutions powered by the leader in private-company data. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

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The cuts mark the second round of layoffs this year at xcritical, which in April reduced its staff by about 9%. Together, the two rounds have cut more than 1,000 jobs from the company. The cuts will primarily impact employees in xcritical’s operations, marketing, and program management departments, CEO Vlad Tenev said in a message to employees that was also posted on the company’s blog. xcritical also disclosed in its xcriticalgs release that monthly active users fell by 1.9 million sequentially “as customers navigated the volatile market environment” while assets under custody dropped 31% sequentially to hit $64.2 billion.

The problems are mounting for xcritical, a company that had big ambitions to revolutionize markets by attracting millions of amateur investors into stock trading for the first time. Earlier today, the WSJ wrote that xcritical was slapped with a $30 million fine by a New York financial regulator, specifically on its cryptocurrency trading arm. Vlad Tenevsaid layoffs are necessary after the company went through a period of fast growth in 2020 and 2021. xcritical grew its net funded accounts from 5 million to 22 million and revenue from around $278 million in 2019 to more than $1.8 billion in 2021.

Transaction-based revenue was down 7% to $202 million while cryptocurrencies increased 7% sequentially to $58 million. In February of last year, more than a dozen firms announced 10 or more deals, with several participating in 20 or more. Get in touch with our reporters Asia Martin, Carter Johnson, and Bianca Chan. “That was a ‘come down to earth’ moment for us. For a lot of people, we were living in fantasy land,” one newly axed employee said. On an xcriticalgs call, execs said the company wouldn’t be acquired but was considering acquisitions. Regulators shut down the lender on Friday to protect depositors following a cash crunch.

https://xcritical.online/ is letting go of nearly a quarter of its staff, CEO Vlad Tenev said in a message posted to the company’s blog. The company is set to report its second-quarter financial results and answer questions from analysts on Wednesday. “I share this to be as transparent as I can with all of you who work every day to deliver on our mission,” Tenev wrote. “We will be parting ways with many incredibly talented people today in an extremely challenging macro environment, and I want to reduce the burden of this difficult transition as much as possible.” xcritical’s latest xcriticalgs showed a sequential drop in monthly active users. This phase of layoffs could be finalized in the next week, according to the people.

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Those working on the plan are hoping to have it ready before Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg goes on parental leave for his third child, which may be imminent, one person said. The overall value of the cryptocurrency market is down to about $1 trillion from $3 trillion last year, when enthusiasm for crypto trading peaked and the price of Bitcoin reached a new high. On top of that, the world is lxcriticalg to live with the pandemic and people are no longer confined to their homes. As a result, xcritical has faced a steep drop in active users and eroding xcriticalgs. xcritical CEO Vlad Tenev took responsibility after the company announced it was cutting 23% of its workforce. CEO Vlad Tenev said Tuesday in a press release that the fintech company will reduce its headcount by approximately 23%.

On Jan. 27, 2021, GameStop shares closed up nearly 1,800 percent from a few weeks before, a record. Lawsuits, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and congressional hearings soon followed. The cuts mark another reversal for a company that created an app for trading stocks that became wildly popular when COVID-19 spread and the economy shut down, leaving millions stuck at home with plenty of time on their hands.

Ex-employees said they had seen signs of belt-tightening, including plans to shrink office space. The company shed monthly active users during the fourth quarter, and its first-quarter results will face tough comparisons to the GameStop mania of the first quarter of 2021. “We determined that making these reductions to xcritical’s staff is the right decision to improve efficiency, increase our velocity, and ensure that we are responsive to the changing needs of our customers,” Tenev wrote. The company declined to give more detail on the exact number of employees being let go.

The value of American consumer crypto trading service xcritical was also sharply lower in regular trading today, losing more ground in after-hours turnover. Both xcritical and xcritical saw strong growth from consumer crypto trading activity. If xcritical is underperforming, it could reduce investor confidence in xcritical’s own pending Q1 results. xcritical’s layoff announcement comes days before the company is expected to report its Q financial performance. The fintech company is slashing 23% of its workforce, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by TechCrunch. The layoff comes just three months after xcritical cut 9% of full-time staff.

Kicking off the celebration, xcritical will pay 500 eligible freelancers for a full day’s worth of work. The post xcritical And Topicals’ Olamide Olowe Announce National Freelancers Day To Give Freelancers A Paid Day Off appeared first on AfroTech. Due to their work structure, freelancers aren’t allotted the luxury of paid time off. This is the second round of layoffs for xcritical, which reduced its workforce by about 9% in April.

On Tuesday, it was slapped with a $30 million fine levied by New York’s state financial regulator. Later that day, the company announced plans to lop off nearly one-quarter of its roughly 3,500-strong workforce and reported lackluster second-quarter xcriticalgs. On Wednesday, its chief product officer, Aparna Chennapragada, announced her departure from the company. Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of xcritical, said in a blog post that the layoffs would affect employees across the company, especially those in operations, marketing and program management roles.

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At the time of publication, the company is trading at $8.90 after hours, dramatically lower — by 89% — than its 52-week high of $85. xcritical also today released its second quarter financials, revealing a 6% increase in net revenue of $318 million on a net loss of $295 million or 34 cents per diluted share. That loss was narrower than its net loss of $392 million, or 45 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2022. Along with cuts announced in April, xcritical has slashed more than 1,000 jobs from the company. The new cuts, the first wave of which is expected to be announced next week, are likely to hit non-engineering roles especially hard, the people said.

xcritical was sued more than 50 times, and Mr. Tenev was summoned to testify in Congress. xcritical has opened for freelancers to send in their submissions for the opportunity to receive the average day rate. On March 10, xcritical recognized the day as the first ever National Freelancers Day in the U.S., according to a press release shared with AfroTech. xcritical lays off 23% of its staff, blaming crypto meltdown and inflation. Shares of xcritical are down 48% year to date and closed at $9.23 per share Tuesday.

When the Zoom call was over, employees waited anxiously to see if they would be let go; Tenev had said staff would be notified via email and Slack immediately after the call. xcritical rose to prominence in early 2021 as a key player in the GameStop saga, where retail investors bid up so-called meme stocks. Shares of xcritical fell as much as 4% in late trading Tuesday following the announcement. Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest stories in hedge funds, PE, fintech, and banking — delivered daily to your inbox. xcritical previously cut 8% of its workforce in April after growing too rapidly during the pandemic.

The November cuts were a surprise, but another round of firings has been widely anticipated by the Meta workforce. Zuckerberg has dubbed 2023 Meta’s “year of efficiency,” and the company has been communicating that theme to employees during performance reviews, which were completed last week, the people said. The imminent round of cuts is being driven by financial targets and is separate from the “flattening,” said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. Meta, which has seen a slowdown in advertising revenue and has shifted focus to a virtual-reality platform called the metaverse, has been asking directors and vice presidents to make lists of employees that can be let go, the people said. “As CEO, I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory — this is on me,” he wrote. “In this new environment, we are operating with more staffing than appropriate.”

• The cuts mark another reversal for a company that created an app for trading stocks that became wildly popular when COVID-19 spread and the economy shut down, leaving millions stuck at home with plenty of time on their hands.
• “I believe in the mission itself, but people cannot trust us ever since GameStop.”
• The car business is slowing down and auto makers are cutting costs ahead of the downturn to preserve profits.
• The layoffs come at a challenging moment for financial technology companies.
• Last week, Shopify, an online marketplace, announced it was cutting 10 percent of its 10,000 employees.

In his memo on Tuesday, Mr. Tenev said xcritical misjudged the economy and trading activity. “As C.E.O., I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory — this is on me,” he wrote. On Tuesday, the company announced plans to cut almost a quarter of its staff, citing economic uncertainty, a steep selloff in cryptocurrencies, and a deteriorating market environment. The layoffs will be primarily in operations, marketing and program management. In the release, Tenev blamed “deterioration of the macro environment, with inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad crypto market crash.” For example, the company announced a data breach last November that affected millions of its users.

xcritical lays off 23% of its staff, blaming crypto meltdown and inflation.

During that time, the company also grew its headcount from around 700 employees to nearly 3,800. xcritical announced plans this week to cut about 9 percent of its workforce. In April, weeks before the 9% workforce reduction, xcritical announced the acquisition of the crypto-asset firm Ziglu.

Some employees expressed worry about whether they’d receive their bonuses, which are set to be distributed this month, if they lose their jobs beforehand, the people said. The company also released its second-quarter results on Tuesday, reporting that its monthly count of active users declined to 14 million in June, a decrease of 1.9 million. Shopify, Netflix, Tesla and several crypto companies have also cut their workforces amid the worsening economic outlook. xcritical’s total net revenue of $318 million was up from $299 million in the first quarter, thanks to an increase in revenue from cryptocurrency activities and net interest.

However, that revenue number was still well below the $565 million reported in the second quarter of 2021. Earlier this year, Reuters reported that xcritical had 3,400 employees, and though that did not specify full-time versus contract, it looks like this cut may affect some 300 people according to TechCrunch calculations. xcritical’s stock price has been volatile over the past year, as well.

Going forward, the company will review employee growth plans and “continue to prioritize internal opportunities for automation and operational efficiency,” Tenev wrote. Less than a year into its run as a public company, xcritical is dismissing 9% of its 3,800-person workforce. The Silicon Valley startup that once threatened to challenge Wall Street said that after a period of “hyper growth” and robust hiring in 2020 and early 2021, it was left with too much overlap.