Electrical motorbike startup Cake filed for chapter February 1, CEO Stefan Ytterborn has confirmed to TechCrunch.
The Swedish firm was in the midst of a funding spherical, simply previous to the submitting, however apparently the withdrawal of an investor was what tipped the corporate over the sting, in line with Swedish media experiences. Ytterborn declined to touch upon what’s going to occur subsequent. Whereas it’s unclear if Cake filed for chapter safety or insolvency, Ytterborn did inform media outlet Dagens Industri that he had nothing else “in mind but to find a solution in one format or another.” His feedback counsel the corporate filed for defense.
Greatest recognized for making high-design bikes, Cake raised a $14 million Sequence A in 2019. It adopted that with a $60 million Sequence B spherical in 2021 led by Swedish pension fund AMF. The capital was meant to fund manufacturing services in Europe, North America and Asia and to scale up its retail capabilities, the corporate mentioned on the time.
Cake has struggled as of late, although. In November, it issued a recall for certainly one of its mopeds due to a threat that the steering column may break. Just some weeks later, it recalled its flagship Kalk e-motorcycle after a unit caught fireplace in a South Korean dealership. Ytterborn confirmed final week to Swedish outlet Breakit that the corporate wasn’t going to have the ability to make wage funds to staff.
Cake’s struggles are simply the newest within the wider world of e-mobility. Superpedestrian went out of enterprise and Chook filed for chapter. Micromobility.com — previously often called Helbiz — was delisted from the Nasdaq inventory trade. Tier and Dott determined to merge in an effort to discover a higher path ahead.
Maybe most related to Cake, although, is the case of Vanmoof. The high-end e-bike maker out of the Netherlands filed for chapter safety final yr. Nevertheless it was capable of finding a purchaser in electrical scooter firm Lavoie that has since gotten the model again up and working.