Most often we come across announcements from companies about acquisitions or fundraising, and in less pleasant cases about layoffs, but it is not uncommon for all three to happen simultaneously. Today (Monday) the startup SundaySky announced that Clearhaven Partners – an American private equity company – has acquired control of the company for $100 million. SundaySky emphasized that this is both an acquisition and investment but didn’t specify how many holdings were acquired by Clearhaven and how much of the money will be allocated for the company’s expenditure. Last year, the company planned to issue an IPO on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange at a value of NIS 1 billion.

Dismisses 24 employees

In the relatively unusual announcement, SundaySky announced that alongside the acquisition and investment, it is laying off 24 employees –which makes up about 13% of the company's manpower. The company cites the economic situation, along with internal changes as the reason for the dismissal. Workers from different departments, as well as different offices (Israel, U.S., and Japan), were all affected, though the company refused to respond how many of the 24 laid-off workers were from the Israeli office.

SundaySky is developing a platform used to produce videos which include all the elements one would need– all in one place. So, companies don't need prior knowledge, experience, or to hire outside teams and videographers to get the content they need. SundaySky operates on a SaaS model of two-year subscription licenses for the platform. Among other things, the platform provides metrics such as the number of views of the various videos on the various channels, insights on viewers and the ability to perform A/B Testing on videos it has produced. The company's system also allows users to quickly update real-time videos in a modular manner, with reusable libraries and custom text-based narration. Among SundaySky's clients are well-known companies including Contacts 1-800, Bank of America, Okta, Rent-A-Center, Select Blinds, Staples, UnitedHealthcare, and Verizon.

SundaySky was founded in 2007 by Shmulik Weller (President and VP of Product, and Yaniv Aksen (VP of Technology). According to PitchBook, the company has raised $76 million to date from, among others, Israel’s Vintage Investment Partners and Viola Ventures, and the investment arm of America’s Comcast.