Fintech decacorn Plaid is laying off 260 employees, or about 20% of its workforce, the company announced today.
While specific details around who exactly was affected remain unknown, sources in recent months had told TechCrunch that the San Francisco-based startup’s engineering team was likely to take a big hit. In March, Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Greze told TechCrunch that he grew his engineering team 17.5x in just four years, from 20 engineers to 350 people. Today’s cut likely reverses some of that hyper-growth.
A company spokesperson did not disclose how many engineers are being impacted, saying “teams across the company” were affected. She added that since Plaid is “aligning to updated headcount goals, teams like recruiting are impacted more than others.”
In a letter to employees that was posted on Plaid’s website, CEO and co-founder Zach Perret said the company saw a rapid increase in usage by its existing customers, a large number of new customers and “substantial revenue acceleration” during COVID. As such, the company “hired aggressively” to meet customer demand and invest in new products. However, macroeconomic shifts resulted in Plaid customers experiencing “slower-than-expected growth,” causing the company to backpedal.