Biggest Startup Bankruptcies Of All Time

According to data provided by PitchBook, here is a list of the biggest startup bankruptcies of all time.

Vice Media has filed for bankruptcy, despite having raised over $1.6 billion from venture capitalists.

The big picture: Vice now joins an ignominious club of well-funded flameouts.

• What follows are companies (excluding ones from China) that raised at least $1 billion in venture capital, but then either filed for bankruptcy or shut down, according to data provided by PitchBook.

Intarcia

• Boston-based Intarcia raised $1.98 billion from venture capitalists, including Fidelity and NEA. At one point it was the most highly valued biotech startup ever.
• But the company could never get FDA approval for its flagship product, a matchstick-sized implantable device for Type II diabetes treatment.
• The company filed for bankruptcy protection in late 2020, and early last year threw in the towel after yet another FDA denial.

FTX

• The FTX story — its rise to serve over 1 million users, its $32 billion valuation and its stunning collapse — is fundamentally one about its charismatic founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.
• The company, which operated a cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund, filed for bankruptcy last November after raising $1.97 billion from big-name backers that ranged from Sequoia Capital to Tom Brady.
• Bankman-Fried was charged with 13 criminal counts of fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations, money laundering and bribery of foreign officials. He’s pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to face trial in October.

Douglas Boneparth, a 38-year-old financial adviser from New York, stated that the Greatest Wealth Transfer in History is no longer an impending phenomenon; it is now a present reality.

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