Gopuff lays off 6% of workforce, as it prepares for ‘next leg of growth’

Gopuff, the quick-delivery convenience tech unicorn, finally got a logo up on its Spring Garden Street headquarters in Philadelphia after nearly five years in the space.

Bad timing for the employees on their way out as the company reduces its workforce. Again.

Gopuff will lay off 6% of its global staff as it looks to become profitable by the end of 2024, a spokesperson said, confirming a tip Technical.ly received the day prior and news first reported by The Information.

About 10,000 employees work for the Philly-based delivery giant, meaning roughly 600 people will be affected. It’s unclear how many of the laid off staffers are in Philadelphia. The company will provide severance packages, it said, stressing that there will be no impact on customer service.

The latest move is an effort to move to a path to being profitable in two years, according to a spokesperson. The cuts will position Gopuff for its “next leg of growth,” the company told Bloomberg. They follow other recent staff reductions.

In March 2023, Gopuff laid off 2% of its workforce, or about 100 employees. Last year may have been weaker earlier than originally thought. The company burned through $400 million in 2023, sources close to the company financials told The Information last week.

Troubles began two years ago, when in the span of about six months Gopuff went through three rounds of layoffs. It cut about 3% of its global workforce in March 2022, closed warehouses and laid off another 1,500 people in July 2022, and let another 250 people go that fall. The $15 billion company put off its ambitions to IPO after its pandemic-era hypergrowth came to a halt, and it was time to downsize.

Many venture capital-backed tech companies have recently gone through rounds of layoffs, either because higher interest rates made money more expensive or because those market changes pushed growth-mode companies toward tighter budgets overall

Gopuff was the region’s first household-name tech unicorn, a story of college kids who stuck around after graduation and built a tech-enabled company that everyday people knew and used — a far cry from the life sciences and enterprise software more familiar here.

But the company had an especially rocky rise, straddling a capital intensive logistics business with demanding tech workplace culture.

Though at times thought to be on track for the public markets, Gopuff’s financial discipline, neighbor relationships and tech community engagement have all been criticized.