Just last month, we reported that Quibi founders were exploring options for the future of Quibi, including a potential sale of the mobile-first streaming service. Now, it looks like the service is out of options and founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is letting investors know that Quibi will shutting down.
A report from The Information this week showed that Katzenberg had tried and failed to sell Quibi. Quibi employees shared that recently, meetings had been canceled and the team had started to prepare for the service to be shuttered.
Today, a report from The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Quibi Holdings LLC is shutting down, after hiring a restructuring firm “to evaluate its options,” according to a source for WSJ.
Quibi launched in April as a mobile-only streaming service, at a time when promoting a service meant to be used on a phone while out and about, was tougher than usual. The service made attempts to pivot by allowing users to cast content onto TVs and just this week adding support for Apple TV, Android TV, and Fire TV.
While there were many factors working against Quibi, a lack of resources wasn’t one of them. Katzenberg and co. had raised $1.75 billion in capital.
Quibi claimed to have 3.5 million users and 1.3 million active users, as of June 2020.