Five months after glassmaker View filed for bankruptcy, CEO Rao Mulpuri has stepped down. Under his tenure, View raised $1.1 billion from SoftBank in 2018 and went public in 2021. It struggled as a public company and ran low on cash several times before declaring bankruptcy in April.
Mulpuri announced his departure on Thursday night in a memo to employees which he also posted on LinkedIn.
“After 15 incredible years, I have decided it’s time to leave View Inc. What a ride it has been! A journey of a lifetime, filled with many ups and downs, but never a dull moment,” he wrote.
View makes eco-friendly windows that darken when it’s sunny, reducing energy costs for air conditioning. The Milpitas, California-based firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize without liquidating all its assets.
Two of View’s longtime investors Cantor Fitzgerald and real estate firm RXR have taken the company private. Cantor sponsored the special purpose acquisition company that merged with View to take it public, raising $815 million. On August 22, the law firm agreed to a $12 million settlement to end a lawsuit by SPAC investors who alleged they were misled. Cantor did not reply to a request for comment in time for publication.
According to a separate memo sent to employees Friday morning, two board members will run View as co-CEOs: Joshua Spellman, chief of staff at Cantor, and Andrew Min, a senior vice president at RXR.
Mulpuri has led View since 2008, replacing one of the firm’s cofounders. Previously he led Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Novellus Systems.
He is known for his magic touch with investors, managing to raise cash for View multiple times when funds ran low, including from the now-bankrupt financier Greensill Capital.
“He’s always been able to pull a rabbit out of a hat when it comes to procuring more money for the company,” one banker familiar with View previously told Business Insider.
In 2022, BI spoke with 29 former and current View employees. They described a culture of micromanagement and said they were afraid of being fired.
Mulpuri obsessively monitored tweets and LinkedIn posts about View and asked people to write positive reviews of the company on Glassdoor, multiple former employees said.
Two former employees in the corporate office said View staff called him “Chairman Rao,” an inside joke rhyming his name with the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong.
“If you didn’t agree with the company’s potential or the rosy picture, or how we were going to revolutionize and change the world, you were kept on the outside,” one of the employees said.
Mulpuri did not comment in time for publication. In his note, he hinted that he will return to the startup industry.
He would be “back in the saddle” building things “sooner than later,” he wrote. “Stay tuned…”
