- General
- October 22, 2020
- 4 minutes read
Quibi Bites The Dust
Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder, Quibi. Photo credit: Sharon Graphics, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Quibi, the short-form video streaming app founded by Hollywood mogul…
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| Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder, Quibi.
Photo credit: Sharon Graphics, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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Quibi, the short-form video streaming app founded by Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, has said that it’ll shut down just six months into its founding and after a whopping $1.8 billion in private backing. The short-form video app launched in April this year but saw poor adoption despite high hopes, currently with about half-a-million subscribers against projections of 7 million in its first year.
In a conference call with investors on Wednesday, Quibi’s founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said the company will return $350 million in capital and call off its operations, implying that Quibi has burned through $1.4 billion in cash, given it was able to raise $1.75 billion from investors. Among investors who had bet on Quibi and have apparently lost substantial amounts include Chinese tech giant Alibaba as well as entertainment giants including Disney, ViacomCBS, 21st Century Fox, Sony Pictures, and Time Warner.
Quibi was a highly touted project of Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood veteran who earlier in his career led the animation division of Disney and before founding Quibi sold his previous company, DreamWorks Animation, for $3.8 billion to NBCUniversal. After founding Quibi, Katzenberg recruited Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay and computing giant HP, to serve as Quibi’s own CEO.
It appears that Quibi, which bet on providing exclusive video content in short-form (“quick bites”) as a service that’ll attract lots of users, has itself had a short-lived life. Just six months into its founding, the company has formally announced that it’s shutting down and marking one of the biggest ever Hollywood fails as a result.
