Adding to the countless unicorn layoffs we’ve seen recently is now Carbon Healtha healthcare company that offers virtual care, said in a letter On Thursday, it laid off 250 people, or 8% of its workforce.
CEO Eren Bali also tweeted the news, noting, “We’ve hired some of the most talented and mission-driven people on the planet. Any company would be lucky to have them. Contact us at alumni@carbonhealth.com if you and we will put you through.”
Bali started Carbon Health six years ago after leading education market Udemy. In the years that followed, Carbon Health continued with Raising more than $500 million in venture-backed investmentsaccording to Crunchbase data.
The most recent was a $350 Million Series D round in July 2021, led by Blackstone Group, which reportedly lifted the company to a valuation of $3.3 billion. We covered the $100 million Series C round in November 2020.
In its letter to employees, Bali outlined two reasons for the decision to let staff go, despite continued and rapid growth over the years. The first was phasing out some of its businesses related to COVID. In 2020, Carbon Health developed both pop-up clinics and test kits for the home.
According to growth stats reported when it raised capital last year, Carbon Health’s patient volume increased 129% between the Series D and Series C increase in November 2020.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, the company has kept up the pace by doubling its full-time workforce to 1,600 employees, while opening more than 80 clinics in 12 states and expanding its virtual clinics to 23 states. One of the goals of Series D was to grow to 1,500 clinics by 2025.
The other reason Bali gave for the decision to lay off staff was a shift to focus on profitability, writing, “We have been more focused on revenue growth, patient acquisition, patient retention and service expansion, and we have been less focused on profitability. While that was the right decision in 2020 and 2021, the macro environment with more volatile capital markets means it is vital that we focus less on growth and more on profitability.”
Affected employees were informed through 1-on-1 conversations, offered separation packages with comprehensive healthcare coverage, removed equity cliffs for options and outplacement support.
As noted, Carbon Health joins a list of unicorns who have had to cut their workforces, some due to growth during the pandemic, including Loom, Hopin and Picsart† Health tech companies that laid off this year included Halycon Health, Mfine, Kry, Thirty Madison, divvyDOSE, Noom, Ahead and Truepill, according to fired.fyiwhich maintains a database of reported redundancies.
