Unicorn startup Uptake Technologies laid off 51 employees after a $2 billion valuation

The Chicago-based data-science startup Uptake Technologies has laid off 51 employees Tuesday. The co-founder and CEO Brad Keywell said in a statement.  The layoff news story was first reported by the Chicago Tribune. With this layoff, Uptake reduced its number of employees from around 800 to around 750 workers. The last Series D funding round of $117 million led by Baillie Gifford, with participation also from existing investors Revolution Growth and GreatPoint Ventures put the company at $2.3 billion post-money valuation. To date, the company has raised a total of $263 million in funding. Other investors in Uptake include: Revolution, New Enterprise Associates and Lightbank.

Back in November 2017, Caterpillar pulled its investment in Uptake. “We move forward with an even more precise focus on building and deploying actionable insight products that create impact for global industry,” said Keywell, a co-founder of Groupon, in the statement. “This was a difficult, but necessary, decision to best serve the needs of Uptake and our customers.”

Uptake Technologies is a SaaS-based product company partnering with global industry to improve productivity, safety, security and reliability. Uptake provides actionable insights platform that makes the world more productive, safe, secure and reliable. We create products and solutions to achieve measurable results and outcomes to enable insight and predictive analytics across key industries by leveraging a common platform. The 3-year old startup was launched by Brad Keywell (CEO) and Eric Lefkofsky.  They both co-founded Groupon before launching Uptake in 2014.