Hopin, last valued at $7.8 billion, has sold its flagship virtual events business with founder set to step down as CEO

• Hopin, last valued at $7.8 billion, said on Wednesday it has sold its virtual events business.
• RingCentral has acquired Hopin’s Events and Sessions product for an undisclosed fee.
• Hopin founder Johnny Boufarhat is also set to depart his role as CEO next month.

Hopin, one of Europe’s fastest-growing startups in history, announced on Wednesday that it had sold its main events business for an undisclosed sum.

During widespread lockdowns, the pandemic darling drew investor attention by offering software that allows businesses to host virtual and hybrid events. Hopin, founded in 2019, raised over $1 billion in five rounds from heavyweight investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, and General Catalyst in less than two years.

However, a slowdown in demand for virtual events as the world reopened, combined with a broader tech downturn, has hampered the company’s growth.

Hopin has now announced the sale of its main events business, Events and Sessions, to RingCentral, a publicly traded cloud communications provider. Other parts of the company, such as acquisitions such as Streamyard, were not included in the transaction. The deal’s terms were not disclosed.

According to a statement, Hopin’s current chief technology officer Badri Rajasekar will succeed the company’s founder, Johnny Boufarhat.

Boufarhat stated that the startup’s events platform had played a “pivotal role” in the company’s growth, but that it would grow to its “fullest potential” within RingCentral’s ecosystem. He also stated that Hopin has a “strong balance sheet, millions of users across our portfolio of products, and profitability.”

The outgoing CEO also revealed a new community product called Superwave, which will join StreamYard and Streamable in the company’s product lineup.

Hopin’s story became one of the most talked-about topics of the COVID-19 era of technology, as investors rushed to back companies that could succeed as in-person life came to a halt. However, the number of events on the platform has decreased significantly, and the company has gone through three rounds of layoffs and has since sunsetted one of its acquisitions, Boomset.

According to the Financial Times in April 2022, Boufarhat has sold approximately $200 million in his own Hopin shares.

According to LinkedIn data, Hopin now employs around 505 people, which is less than half of its peak of 1,110. Furthermore, Hopin is now seven months late in filing its accounts, despite the fact that Boufarhat recently made the Sunday Times’ annual rich list, with a net worth of $2.2 billion on paper.