The end of scooters

Scooter startup Bird (over $400 million raised) has reportedly laid off between four to five percent of its workforce, or about 40 people among its 900-person team. 

Lyft — which is set to IPO in the coming weeks — also laid off up to 50 staffers in its bikes and scooters division this month. These were mainly folks who were acquired into the company when it purchased electric bike-sharing startup Motivate. 

Could the scooter fad be coming to an end? 🤔

Probably not (yet). See our earlier newsletter on how scooters won SXSW this year. But scooter companies are cutting costs and consolidating in an attempt to edge out competition in the space — because there is a lot of it. 

Lime ($765M raised) is raising another $400M at a $2B valuation. Bird is also reportedly raising another $300M at a $2B valuation. In January electric scooter company Grin merged with bike-share startup Yellow to expand electric transportation in Latin America. 

Last April, Uber bought Jump Bike to enter the electric bike sharing business, and is now getting into subscriptions to compete with bike-sharing incumbents like Citi Bike. In November, Ford bought dockless electric scooter company Spin for $100M, marking the first move by a major automaker into the scooter space. 🛴

Reminder: Apple is finally unveiling its plans to take on Hollywood and the news business at its live event today. Apple already announced upgrades to several of its core hardware products last week, including AirPods, the iPad Air and iPad Mini. 

We'll be live tweeting the event, so you can follow along here.