Lightricks lays off 80 employees

Israel-based Lightricks is laying off 80 employees, 70 of them in Israel, according to a report in CList. The layoffs amount to around 12% of the company’s workforce, which numbers 680 employees based out of offices in Israel, United States, China and the United Kingdom.

Lightricks makes numerous imaging and creativity apps, including Facetune2, Facetune Video, Filtertune, Videoleap, Motionleap, Photoleap, Artleap, Lightleap, and Beatleap.

Lightricks, which raised a $130 million funding round at a $1.8 billion valuation last September, also notified its employees earlier it will be minimizing marketing and operational costs to reduce the cash burn rate and to avoid the need to raise more funding in the coming years.

“Due to the situation in the markets and the global financial crisis, we need to secure the company’s long-term success while realizing its strategy and maintaining the current financial stability which is why we are currently halting projects that don’t support our strategy and accelerating other projects, as a result of which we are forced to cut some of the positions in the company,” said Zeev Farbman. “We will also cut our marketing and operational costs, but we will do so while maintaining our employees’ conditions. We are committed to supporting the employees who will be leaving and helping them find a job.”

CList notes Lightricks is one of a growing list of Israel-based “unicorns” to recently lay off employees despite having hundreds of millions of dollars in their account.