Rad Power Bikes has told its employees it would be facing shutdown in January if it doesn’t get new funding, or get acquired. According to TechCrunch, the company’s leadership “still fighting to find ways to continue,” and “the cessation of Rad’s operations is not a foregone conclusion,” according to the email, which was sent by Rad Power’s “people team.”
Employees were told there had been a “very promising” option to keep the company alive that “appeared to be likely to close,” but the deal mentioned did not come through.
“Rad is nothing without its people and wants to ensure that all employees are taken care of and provided for to the fullest extent feasible. Executive leaders are hopeful that a viable solution will be found to ensure that Rad team members remain gainfully employed for the foreseeable future. However, to be fully transparent, despite our collective efforts, it is possible that this may not happen, and Rad may be forced to cease operations,” the company told employees via an email.
READ: Nvidia joins $260 million funding round for conversational AI firm Uniphore (
Rad filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the Washington state Employment Security Department on Friday. The company told GeekWire the filing was part of “advance written notice of a potential cessation of operations that could occur as early as January 2026.”
Rad Powers was once Seattle’s highest-profile consumer hardware startup, riding pandemic-era e-bike demand to unicorn status.
According to the WARN filing, a shutdown would impact 64 jobs at Rad’s headquarters location in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. Affected positions include the company’s CEO, CFO, multiple director-level roles, customer service reps, and bike mechanics. Rad also operates retail locations in nine cities in the U.S. and Canada.
“No final decisions have been made, and these notices are precautionary,” the Rad spokesperson said. “Rad’s leadership is actively pursuing all viable options to keep the company operating.”
Rad Power has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the last few years coming out of the pandemic. While the pandemic had originally boosted micromobility companies like Rad, a “sudden drop in consumer demand” left the company saddled with excess inventory, according to the email viewed by TechCrunch.
READ: Senate passes funding bill to end longest US government shutdown (
A number of other e-bike or micromobility companies have also run into trouble recently. Companies that had gone out of business or had to restructure over the last few years include Cake, VanMoof, Superpedestrian, and Bird.
Earlier this year, Rad swapped CEOs, and brought in an executive named Kathi Lentzsch who has spent decades turning around underperforming companies. Lentzsch and the other executives at Rad Power have spent the last few months exploring “strategic partnerships with other companies that could acquire [Rad Power] or provide funding so the company could keep moving forward,” per the email.
Last week, the company issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice to the employees at its Seattle headquarters, which told them that the 64 people working there could be laid off as soon as January 9, 2026. The email says that this isn’t a targeted layoff, rather this office is the only Rad Power office with enough workers to necessitate this kind of mandated warning.