Fintech company Pagaya cutting around 20% of workforce in second round of layoffs
Fintech company Pagaya is embarking on an extensive cutback process, Calcalist has learned. The company will lay off 100 employees, most of them in Israel, and Yariv Hasar, who joined Pagaya to lead its Israeli operations two years ago, will leave. The layoffs will affect all departments and all levels of management. Pagaya currently employs 540 people, of which 400 are in Israel.
This is the second round of layoffs by Pagaya in a year and a half. At the beginning of 2023, it fired 140 employees out of the 650 it employed at the time. Most of those laid off (110) were from Israel. Consequently, Pagaya’s management, which is mostly based in the U.S., continues to reduce its presence in Israel.
Pagaya, which developed an engine for underwriting loans to enable the granting of credit to a wider audience, operates primarily in the American market. In Israel, its center focuses on R&D, with a small credit fund operation that faced a crisis last year after it halted redemptions for investors.
The layoffs at Pagaya come a few days after a similar move by the Israeli company OrCam, which also laid off 100 employees. At this stage, it is difficult to determine whether this is a trend, but it is possible that the move in both cases is related to the war in Israel.
The current cut comes shortly after Pagaya published good financial reports for the first quarter of 2024, revealing revenues of $245.2 million, a 30% increase compared to the corresponding quarter. The increase in revenues contributed to an improvement in profitability, but the company still recorded a loss of $21.2 million in the quarter. Additionally, the company’s stock, which trades in New York at a value of $790 million, was added to the Russell 2000 index. Those close to the company believe that the current cuts are intended to accelerate the transition to profitability and achieve positive cash flow. In recent months, Pagaya’s management has been focusing on becoming a product company.
Pagaya was founded in 2016 by Gal Krubiner, who serves as CEO, Avital Pardo, who serves as CTO, and Yahav Yulzari, the company’s CRO. The three founders spend most of their time at the headquarters in the U.S., and the rest of the management is also American. The current move is led by Sanjiv Das, the president of Pagaya, who joined the company last October. The company went public through a merger with a SPAC at a valuation of $8 billion in 2022.
