After a cash injection: Personio is worth $8.5 billion

The Munich HR startup has quintupled its rating since 2021. Also: Gorillas does not seem to find a buyer and Elon Musk makes it clear how many Tesla employees have to go.

Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.

The top topics:

Personio has managed to collect 200 million US dollars in investments, including from the financial investor Greenoaks Capital. Thanks to the new injection of money, the personnel software provider from Munich is now valued at 8.5 billion dollars. Personio is currently the second most valuable startup in Germany behind Celonis. The company was able to strengthen this position once again after the new rating. The new amount will increase the financing round from October, when the company had already raised $270 million.

The funding will be used both to further expand the customer base – which now includes 6,000 companies with over 500,000 employees – and to improve the platform. Automation tools are to be set up to improve the internal operating processes of companies. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt und Techcrunch]

on Founder scene: Learning to deal with doubts – the doubts of others and your own. That was the first lesson that Momox-Founder Christian Wegner learned. There should be many more, as he revealed to our editor Nina Anika Klotz. And Wegner was often desperate: with works councils, data protection problems and layoffs. He gave us nine (bad) situations that every start-up team will most likely encounter at some point. [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]

And here are the other headlines of the night:

Gorillas is considering the entry of a strategic investor and even the sale to a competitor, as Gründerszene reported on Monday. According to a media report, however, the investment bank commissioned by the gorillas, JP Morgan, has so far not found anyone interested in the Berlin food delivery service. Several people familiar with the matter told the “Handelsblatt”. Gorillas himself declined to comment to the newspaper. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt]

TeslaCEO Elon Musk spoke at an event in the US about how many Tesla employees will actually lose their jobs. Musk confirmed reports that Tesla plans to reduce its workforce by 10 percent over the next three months. But he emphasized that the US electric car manufacturer also wanted to increase the number of hourly employees. That way, the layoffs would only affect about 3.5 percent of the total workforce. White-collar workers make up about two-thirds of Tesla employees. On Sunday, two former Tesla employees filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging the company violated US federal law with the “collective layoffs.” [Mehr bei Business Insider und CNBC]

DocusignCEO Dan Springer is stepping down, the company announced on Tuesday. The decision came after the electronic signature software maker lost more than 60 percent of its market value this year. The company didn’t give an official reason for his departure, but said Springer “agreed to step down with immediate effect.” A final successor has not yet been named. Springer took on the role in 2017 and took the company public in 2018. A change in personnel Amazon also made headlines: Amazon manager Doug Herrington will replace his colleague Dave Clark as head of retail operations. [Mehr bei Wall Street Journal und The Information]

Blockfi has teamed up with the crypto exchange FTX agreed on a credit line of 250 million US dollars. With this, the crypto loan company wants to strengthen its balance sheet. Blockfi has been under financial pressure in recent weeks and laid off 20 percent of its employees earlier this month. Most recently, the company liquidated a loan to crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. In a planned round of financing, the company’s valuation is also to be reduced by a fifth. [Mehr bei Financial Times und The Information]

Audible can be happy about an important victory: After Barack and Michelle Obama’s podcast contract with the Swedish music streaming service Spotify expires, the Amazon company Audible has signed a contract with the former US President and his wife. For Audible, which is better known for audiobooks than podcasts, this is a big win. The separation between the Obamas and Spotify is said to be by mutual request. [Mehr bei Techcrunch und The Verge]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: Everphone lends second-hand smartphones to large companies. Investors have so far put hundreds of millions into the Berlin company. Those 18 slides brought in millions. [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]

Don’t want to miss anything? Then subscribe to our Gründerszene newsletter! It appears every morning at 8:30 a.m. and brings you all the important news straight to your inbox.

Happy Wednesday!

Your Gründerszene editors