ELD and fleet management solutions provider Samsara announced Wednesday it was laying off 300 employees, 18% of its workforce, as the company responds to the coronavirus downturn.
“It’s now clear that COVID-19 has become the most significant economic event in the past 100 years,” CEO Sanjit Biswas said in a blog post, and “since the outbreak, we’ve had to plan for scenarios that were unimaginable just a few months ago.”
Geographic areas impacted by the layoffs focused on Italy, Spain and Benelux, as these regions have “the longest paths to profitability,” spokesperson Lindsay McKinley told FreightWaves.
Samsara will continue to invest in the U.K., France and the DACH region, but with a focus on cash efficiency, she said.
Other layoffs took place in Samsara’s recruiting and events division, as large, in-person events are unlikely to resume for the foreseeable future.
The company said workers impacted by the layoffs will receive severance pay, coaching and outplacement services, as well as health care coverage for the rest of the year.
Also on Wednesday, Samsara announced a $400 million equity financing raise. The funding will help the company operate sustainably “even under worst case economic conditions,” according to McKinley.
Samsara claims 15,000 customers across a variety of industries and geographic markets. Its offerings include hardware, software and cloud aimed at bringing real-time visibility, analytics and AI to trucking operations.
But freight volumes are still mostly far from a rebound. And truck manufacturers are reporting record lows for new sales, meaning fleets are not expanding this year.
Although Samsara expects to see continued revenue and customer growth, McKinley said, sales will likely take longer to close “as businesses operate cautiously.”
The layoffs come less than two months after competitor KeepTruckin laid off 18% of its workforce. Both companies reportedly focused on smaller operators but had also started to pull market share from legacy providers such as Trimble (TRMB) and Omnitracs.
With the new funding, Samsara now has approximately $600 million of cash on hand. Investors included Alliance Bernstein, Franklin Templeton, General Atlantic, Sands Capital Management and Warburg Pincus, along with previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Dragoneer Investment Group, General Catalyst and Tiger.
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Earl Thomas
Clearly between the layoff, reduction in valuation and need for that much cash they are overextended. This has the makings of a FleetMatics. Since the Exec team sold the last company, you think they won’t get hacked up by ATT or Verizon?
They seem desperate…
Frank
Who knew raising millions in emergency funds so your company doesn’t go under was this easy, just fire people and you are good to go. For a company with as low of morals as these people this comes as no surprise.
Schwinn Pedalton
This company lays off hundreds of people, raises hundreds of million at the same time? It’s clear their meteoric rise in the industry, fueled by massive influx of Venture capitalist money, will soon come to an end. This company has one sole purpose: immense displacement of customers from their existing providers with gimmicky tech, fast talking sales reps, and heavy discounts in order to get bought out at a high price and get that ROI back to the investors as quickly as possible. This company is not sustainable and not in it for the long haul.
Art
Yup.
Tons of other ELD telematics competitors.. nothing samara has is revolutionary.
Just another tech sales company.
whoever gave them $300 million has too money to burn.
Raabert
Exactly. But they wear black turtlenecks and claim they are disrupting the space with a ‘sensor network’. BS.
Their engineering daily meeting should start with ‘We ain’t no disruptors. We are just copying stuff that first started in 1998 with Qualcomm. We are buying out contracts’. Slilcon valley slick – my ass
I wonder what the dilution is for those remaining employees. I don’t even know if they know anything about preferred versus common, preference ratcheting at exit. They may think ‘Gee I have 10,000 shares’. Means nothing based on total outstanding and VC and founder preferences. Founders are also sticking it to employees these days with ‘Founders preferred’ shares.. Ask Sanjit Biswas to disclose all that in the next all hands call.
Kimberly
Sorry for the employees, but Verizon Connect Reveal has the best tracking solutions on the market. You should call them
Harry
LinkedIn posts show an application engineer, an account executive, a senior software engineer, customer success manager, channel sales, support etc being laid off. Events division huh?
Tim
So they raised 400M today and still let 300ish people go the same day?…. they must be burning through cash. You wonder how long they will be around before they close shop or are bought at a discount.
Geoff
Hmmmm… the smear campaign they launched against KeepTruckin’ last month about employee layoffs does not appear to have aged very well.
Dave
I guess we should all have expected this when KeepTruckin let people go. Sad.
What’s interesting it’s the exact same percentage of staff laid off.
Weird.