Two Bay Area health care startups are laying off hundreds of people as concerns persist about a market downturn.
Truepill is laying off more than 300 people across multiple rounds. The Hayward-based company powers other health care businesses by providing pharmacy, telehealth and diagnostics services.
On Thursday, TechCrunch reported that Truepill was cutting more than a third of its workforce which would impact 175 people. It's the company's third round of cuts this year. The cuts reportedly impacted Truepill's entire U.K. team, as well as the product and data teams. It had more than 800 employees in May, according to PitchBook.
In June, Truepill CEO Sid Viswanathan announced that the company was cutting 15% of its workforce, which impacted around 150 people, TechCrunch reported, and an unknown number of jobs were cut in April, according to tech industry layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi.
For Truepill — a company valued at $1.6 billion after it raised $140 million in a Series D round last year — the situation is complex. In April, Chicago-based ADHD treatment app Ahead shut down. It was backed by Truepill. Weeks later, Truepill stopped fulfilling ADHD medications amid growing scrutiny over prescriptions coming from telehealth companies like San Francisco-based Cerebral, one of Truepill's customers, which stopped prescribing Adderall and Ritalin in May after the DEA reportedly started investigating the company, Business Insider reported at the time.
Meanwhile, San Francisco-based meditation app Calm is laying off 20% of its staff, or around 90 people, which the WSJ reported on Thursday. The cuts reportedly impacted the marketing department, at least partially, and came after other efforts at reducing expenses.
Calm had more than 500 employees in March, according to PitchBook. The company was founded in 2012 and valued at $2 billion in 2020 after raising a $75 million Series C round, according to PitchBook.
An employee told the WSJ that the cuts were due to "macroeconomic" trends.
Tech companies based in the Bay Area, including startups and public companies, have cut at least 13,000 jobs this year, according to an analysis by Bay Area Inno. That figure includes a company's total labor force cuts, not just those within the Bay Area.
