Can Cake survive the bite of new layoffs?

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Hi readers,

It hasn’t been a good year for Cake Group.

It struggled financially in 2023. It had to cut staff. Its founders feuded, which became public when CTO U-Zyn Chua asked a Singapore court to liquidate the firm.

It seemed that Chua and Cake Group CEO Julian Hosp, the two remaining founders, had ended their feud in May, when latter agreed to buy out former.

But the question I had then was, why would you do that?

Turning around Cake was never going to be easy. Its reputation had taken a beating, and it posted an operating loss of US$26.4 million in 2023. Confidence in crypto has never returned to the levels before the FTX fiasco and likely never will.

But confidence in Bitcoin seemed to be returning following a March rally.

So after acquiring Chua’s shares, Hosp undertook a “90-day challenge” on social media in an attempt to channel some of that growing enthusiasm back into Cake Group. But on day 84, he acknowledged that a new round of layoffs was inevitable.

We won’t know until Sept. 1 how large the job cuts will be. Speculation is high that this could be the largest layoffs yet at Cake Group, although Hosp said the company will go on. How they’re going to do that, though, is still an open question.

— Scott Shuey, journalist at Tech in Asia

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