Pagaya Founders (photo source company website)
Israeli fintech firm Pagaya has lost 97% of its value, Rapyd, an Israeli fintech startup, is about to lay off dozens of its employees and Trax Image Recognition, an Israeli startup and a unicorn that offers retailers a platform for getting the most out of consumers, is firing about 8% of its workforce. These three firms are just the latest examples of how Israel Startup Nation is suffering along with everyone else from the worldwide financial crisis.
Pagaya is probably the worst example of the current disaster that Startup Nation is going through. After hitting its peak with a market cap as high as $20 billion in August, the company’s stock lost 97% of its value, dropping to a market cap of $681 million. Pagaya went public on the NASDAQ in June after making an SPAC merger. Pagaya may have been hurt to such an extreme because the company made the tactical error of moving too quickly to issue millions more shares than were offered in the IPO.
Founded in 2016 by CEO Gal Krubiner, Yahav Yulzari – a former Israeli soccer star — Avital Pardo and CEO Gal Krubiner, Pagaya Investments is a global financial technology company with new ways to handle institutional asset management. Focusing on fixed income and alternative credit, the company offers a variety of discretionary funds to institutional investors (including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds), insurance companies and banks. It boasts a suite of “unmatched artificial intelligence technologies and state-of-the-art algorithms delivers an exceptional, scalable performance edge in the digital lending space.”
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Rapyd, Israel’s one time biggest unicorn which not too long ago hit a $15 billion valuation, may be firing more than 90 people, or 10% of its workforce. Rapyd said that the layoffs are coming because of its acquisition of 2 other companies. Firings usually happen after mergers.
“Now, with the completion of the merger of Vailtor into Rapyd, company executives are currently working on planning for 2023 and 2024 and the company is looking into reducing its workforce,” said Rapyd.
Founded in 2016, Rapyd boats that it does for fintech what the cloud did for IT. The company says that its Global Payments Network connects a company to “all the ways the world likes to pay and the infrastructure to create your own fintech solutions, like ewallets, cards and financial services. With Rapyd, digital sellers in Latin America can accept cash.” Online shoppers in Asia can pay with their favorite ewallet. Businesses can make payouts to companies and individuals anywhere in the world. With 900+ payment methods in 100 countries, clients can open new markets, reach new customers, and create new opportunities anywhere.
Fellow Israeli unicorn Trax is firing as many as 80 people. Trax said that the cuts are coming as part of an effort to reach profitability in 2023.
Founded in 2010 by its Executive Chairman Joel Bar-El together and CCO Dror Feldheim, Trax’s says that its mission is to enable brands and retailers to harness the power of digital technologies to produce the “best shopping experiences imaginable.” Trax’s retail platform allows customers to understand “what is happening on shelf, in every store, all the time so they can focus on what they do best – delighting shoppers.”
