African cross-border fintech startup Chipper Cash, which is funded by troubled crypto exchange FTX has laid off some of its staff .
Chipper Cash was founded in San Francisco in 2018 by Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled. The company offers mobile-based, no fee, P2P payment services in seven countries: Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Africa and Kenya.
Although the company is yet to confirm the development, Erin Fusaro, Chipper Cash’s Vice President of Engineering, in a LinkedIn post shared “This morning a significant amount of Chipper staff were let go in a layoff. While I was not among them, many of my close colleagues and friends were. If you’re looking for talented engineering leadership, engineers, technical program managers, analysts, or IT staff, please comment here and I’ll do my best to start connecting people. To those let go today, please feel free and welcome to DM me, I’ll help you find a soft spot to land if I can.”
According to documents shared by the Financial Times on Alameda’s venture capital portfolio, Chipper Cash valuation was reduced from $2 billion to $1.25 billion before FTX’s bankruptcy.
Last May, Chipper Cash raised a $100 million Series C round led by SVB Capital, the investment arm of U.S. high-tech commercial bank Silicon Valley Bank and in November , it received $150 million, an extension of that round which saw Chipper Cash raise a total of $250 million.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX led the round and Chipper Cash’s valuation skyrocketed to $2 billion, becoming one of Africa’s five unicorns last yea
In the year 2022, US, Asian, and European money markets have been on a decline as venture funding slowed down for startups. Many companies such as Netflix, Meta, Google including several startups have frozen hiring or laid off part their staff.