Rapid (formerly known as RapidAPI), a startup that built an API marketplace worth $1 billion laid off another 70 workers last year, less than two weeks later Let go of 50% of the staffTechCrunch has learned.
An affected employee who wished to remain anonymous told TechCrunch that only 42 people remain at the company — down from 230 in April — reflecting an 82% drop in headcount.
All of the company’s remaining employees in Europe, and some in the US, were affected by the latest round, according to the source.
Founded in 2015 by then 17 years old Iddo Gino, RapidAPI has built a platform that helps companies find and integrate third-party APIs, and manage their own use of their own internal APIs. It raised $150 million in March 2022 in a Series D round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. Other backers include Qumra, Andreessen Horowitz, M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), Viola Growth, Green Bay Ventures, and Grove Ventures.
In particular, CEO Marc Friend only very recently took over as CEO of the company. Founder and former CEO Gino is now a technical advisor, per a company announcement. A source tells TechCrunch that Gino was “removed by the board” and a sale of the company is expected as the next step, though at a price “well below” the $1 billion it was valued at last year.
TechCrunch reached out to ask Rapid if the latest layoffs had occurred, if Gino had indeed been removed by the board, and if a sale was in the works. The company just said it would contact us if it chose to comment.
Last November, RapidAPI announced that this was the case renamed to Rapid and that over 4 million developers used the public API hub. That hub, it claimed, had grown to become one of the world’s largest — giving developers the ability to integrate more than 40,000 APIs from companies like Twilio, Microsoft, and Google. At the time, it was promoting new corporate clients such as ATA, Poly, Formula 1’s Scuderia AlphaTauri and Sun Life Financial. It also boasted that it had doubled its workforce in the past year – to 200.
The source shared with TechCrunch that the layoffs were “rushed and messy,” with “no support provided” and in some cases, incorrect terminations were sent before they were withdrawn.
