Barely six months after it launched, video streaming service Quibi is shutting down. “We are winding down the business and looking to sell its content and technology assets,” announced co-founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman in a blog post overnight.
“Quibi was a big idea and there was no one who wanted to make a success of it more than we did. Our failure was not for lack of trying; we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us… Quibi is not succeeding. Likely for one of two reasons: because the idea itself wasn’t strong enough to justify a standalone streaming service or because of our timing.”
Launching a mobile-only video streaming service designed for short-snack viewing during a pandemic that locked people down in their homes with bigger screens was unlucky, but Quibi couldn’t crack the problem even with $1.8bn of funding – one report suggests there’s $350m left to return to investors.
“Over the coming months we will be working hard to find buyers for these valuable assets who can leverage them to their full potential,” wrote Katzenberg and Whitman.
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