The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Strategic decision · 2019–2024
Hopin's $7.75B virtual-events bet ends in a 2024 liquidation, 5 years after launch
Pandemic-era events unicorn Hopin raised $1B+ at a $7.75B valuation, then liquidated its UK parent in Feb 2024.
Hopin
What the business is
London-founded platform for planning and hosting virtual and hybrid events — conferences, summits and large meetings — plus livestreaming tools it acquired along the way.
Starting capital：More than $1B raised Feb 2020–Aug 2021, including a $400M Series C at $5.65B and a $450M Series D at $7.75B
How it started
Founded in London in June 2019 by Johnny Boufarhat, Hopin gave organizations a single platform to run virtual events after Covid-19 shut down physical gatherings. Boufarhat, who lives with an autoimmune condition that limits crowd exposure, built the company around the idea that live experiences should be accessible without being physically present (Silicon Republic).
What happened
Hopin went from a six-person team to more than 800 employees in 47 countries and supported over 100,000 organisations hosting millions of virtual attendees monthly at its peak. It raised a $400M Series C in March 2021 at a $5.65B valuation and a $450M Series D in August 2021 at $7.75B, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures, Temasek, Tiger and Coatue, and bought StreamYard, Streamable, Jamm, Attendify and Boomset (Silicon Republic; TechCrunch). When in-person events returned, demand collapsed: by April 2022 the FT counted under 500 events on its discovery tab, down from 15,000+ in November 2020, and no new funding followed the 2021 rounds — only repeated layoffs (TechCrunch).
How it ended up
On 2023-07-31 Hopin sold its core Events and Session products to RingCentral for $15M upfront plus up to $35M in earnout (RingCentral 10-Q); on 2024-02-13 its UK parent entered members' voluntary liquidation as HQ moved to the US (Companies House; Sifted); in April 2024 the remaining business — StreamYard, Streamable and Superwave — was sold to Bending Spoons (BusinessWire). The UK entity was dissolved on 2026-05-24 (Companies House).
Background
Hopin was a London-founded platform for planning and hosting virtual and hybrid events, created by Johnny Boufarhat in June 2019. When Covid-19 forced conferences online, it became one of Europe's fastest-growing startups: more than 100,000 organisations used it, hundreds of thousands of attendees passed through its events monthly, and Slack, VMware, UPS and Pepsi were customers.
The boom produced a $400M Series C in March 2021 at a $5.65B valuation and a $450M Series D in August 2021 at $7.75B, with more than $1B raised in under 18 months from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures, Temasek, Tiger and Coatue. The company bought StreamYard, Streamable, Jamm, Attendify and Boomset to bundle the entire event stack.
The bet was that virtual events were a permanent category. When in-person gatherings returned, demand collapsed: the FT counted under 500 events on Hopin's discovery tab by April 2022, down from more than 15,000 in November 2020, and no new funding came after 2021 — only repeated layoffs. In July 2023 Hopin sold its core Events and Session products to RingCentral for $15M plus up to $35M in earnout, its UK parent entered members' voluntary liquidation in February 2024, and the remaining StreamYard business was sold to Bending Spoons in April 2024.
What has to be true
- Hopin's demand was pandemic-driven, and the category shrank sharply once in-person events returned.
- The company raised $1B+ at a $7.75B peak valuation, pricing in sustained growth that never materialized.
- Discovery traffic collapsed from 15,000+ events to under 500, a leading indicator that organizers were abandoning the platform.
- With no new funding after 2021 and multiple rounds of layoffs, Hopin sold its core product for pennies on the dollar and wound up liquidated within five years of launch.
What can be applied
A category created by a crisis can evaporate when the crisis ends: Hopin rode pandemic demand to $7.75B, but when offices reopened the use case shrank faster than a $1B war chest could redeploy it.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-02 Hopin no longer exists as a standalone company: its UK parent HOPIN LTD entered members' voluntary liquidation on 2024-02-13 and was dissolved on 2026-05-24 (Companies House). The products live on under new owners — RingCentral rebranded the former Events and Session tools as RingCentral Events and Sessions after paying $15M plus up to $35M in earnout, and Bending Spoons acquired the remaining StreamYard, Streamable and Superwave business in April 2024. Founder Johnny Boufarhat handed the CEO role to Badri Rajasekar when the deal closed (TechCrunch).
Sources
- Hopin raises $450m and readies its product suite for hybrid events
- Hopin, the struggling virtual conference unicorn, sells events and engagement units to RingCentral
- Hopin's UK business enters liquidation as it transfers HQ to the US
- HOPIN LTD insolvency case
- RingCentral Form 10-Q — Note 14. Subsequent Events (Hopin asset purchase)
- Bending Spoons to Acquire StreamYard, Leader in Live-Streaming and Video-Recording Solutions
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