Weeks after announcing a new web3-based direction for the company that captured national media attention from Forbes and Fox Business, Madison-based music technology startup LÜM said it's shutting down.
"It is with great sadness that we announce that LÜM will be closing its doors, effective immediately," the company posted on its LinkedIn page Friday.
LÜM CEO and a 2020 Wisconsin Inno Under 25 winner Max Fergus declined to immediately share details in an interview, saying the company would be posting the full story this week.
In mid-December, LÜM announced it would be "completely relaunching using blockchain technology" into a platform that would leverage nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to allow users to "own their fandom," a Dec. 14 blog post from the company stated.
The startup planned to relaunch in March, Fergus told Wisconsin Inno in a January interview about the company's new direction.
The company's original platform included more than 200,000 artists who had uploaded over 600,000 tracks to the platform. LÜM had been partnered with NE-YO since 2020 and the R&B artist was on board for the platform's NFT future, Fergus said.
LÜM has raised around $5 million in pre-seed and seed funding, Fergus said. Most recently, it raised $3 million announced in August 2020 led by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).
The startup had around 13 full-time employees as of mid-January, Fergus said. Employees were based in Madison as well as Portland, California and Atlanta, he said.
