Ellation, a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group purchased Crunchyroll in 2013 for an estimated $100 million. For the last few years, the anime streaming platform has experienced nothing but growth as it has diversified its catalog and recently entered into a powerful new collaboration with Funimation.
However, on Wednesday, Ellation laid off 17 employees from Crunchyroll, prompting fears among the anime community that the streaming platform might be in trouble.
A peek on Glassdoor reveals that the company falls in the 51-200 range of employees. Meaning anywhere from 34% to 9% of the company's workforce was let go.
When news of the layoffs hit the web, Ellation's CEO Tom Pickett, provided ANN with the following statement:
"We recently closed an acquisition to significantly expand the size of our engineering team. As part of company restructuring efforts, it is with regret that we needed to make some difficult but necessary changes at Ellation. This morning, we parted ways with 17 employees that played important roles in helping us grow the company over the last several years.
This was not an easy decision, but one that puts Ellation on the path towards continued growth. While this announcement is unfortunate, it is not a reflection of Ellation's overall business. It was a record-year for Crunchyroll in 2016 and VRV is off to a great start. We have some exciting plans for 2017 that we'll be sharing soon."
VRV, a subscription-based content bundle of streaming services, launched by Ellation last year. Both Crunchyroll and FUNimation are included within the bundle.
Variety previously reported that Crunchyroll
has at least 700,000 paying subscribers.
Tweets from Crunchyroll's Marekting Manager, Vitctoria Holden can be read below.