Norwegian tech company Cxense is closing its Boston office after laying off a majority of employees who were involved in the business unit of a local startup it acquired two years ago.
The layoffs come after Cxense acquired the media business unit of Boston-based Ramp for $10 million in September 2015. Ramp, a video distribution technology company that still operates independently, was founded in 2006 by Alex Laats and has raised over $37 million from investors, including Accel, Comcast Ventures, Fairhaven and General Catalyst.
Ståle Bjørnstad, Cxense's CEO, told BostInno in an email on Wednesday that about 35 people were laid off last Thursday. He said a couple of employees — including Chief Product Officer Tom Wilde, who was previously CEO of Ramp — will remain with Cxense in Boston, though they will work remotely. The company now has a total of roughly 15 employees working in North America, Bjørnstad added, and that it will continue to manage client relationships from its offices in New York, San Jose and Oslo, Norway.
Cxense decided to close its Boston office, Bjørnstad said, because the company wanted to consolidate its East Coast presence and a number of its major clients, like Wall Street Journal and NBC Universal, are based in New York. The company, which is traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange, provides a data management and personalization platform that gives marketers and publishers valuable insights about their customers for sales and marketing efforts.
In Cxense's second quarter earnings last week, the company said while its core data management and personalization business continues to grow, its total revenue was down 10 percent to $5.7 million "due to churn" from non-core businesses. Bjørnstad said Cxense will continue to offer the product associated with the Ramp media business unit acquisition.
"In order to drive growth for our core offering, the new board and management have decided to sharpen focus on our core offering and organization, while divesting non-core operations," Bjørnstad said in a statement in Cxense's Q2 earnings. "This will provide us with a clearer market positioning and increase the growth potential for our core business. It will also shorten our time to break-even and lower capital demand."
