Kodoani.com – Anime streaming service Crunchyroll laid off about 85 employees last week. According to an employee with knowledge of the recent terminations, the layoffs included employees in the United States, Moldova, France, Germany and Australia and primarily affected the marketing and engineering sectors of the company. company. The source did not know if the layoffs only affected full-time employees or included contractors.
According to Crunchyroll’s job listings page, the company has 12 offices with locations in Culver City in California, San Francisco, Dallas, New York City, Melbourne in Australia, Paris and Roubaix in France, Berlin, Tokyo, Chișinău in Moldova, Lausanne in Switzerland and London.
Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini notified employees of the layoffs in an email on Feb. 16. The email cited the reason behind the contract termination as the merger of the Funimation and Crunchyroll teams. At an “All Employees” meeting on Tuesday, Crunchyroll management informed employees that those laid off would continue to receive benefits for the duration of their severance. Multiple sources cite that the decision was not a cost-saving measure but a matter of resolving redundant roles.
According to one source, Crunchyroll estimated there were about 1,400 full-time employees before the layoffs.
Anime News Network has reached out to Crunchyroll for comment, but a representative for the company referred to Purini’s email. The company declined to provide the exact number of layoffs or current full-time employees at Crunchyroll.
Sony’s Funimation Global Corporation completed its acquisition of Crunchyroll from AT&T on August 9, 2021, after the company first announced the acquisition in December 2020. The purchase price was $1.175 billion. US and proceeds are paid in cash at closing.
