When Big Companies Die
Corporate autopsies and post-mortems. Read why the world's biggest businesses collapsed — and what you can learn from their failures.
Latest Autopsies
Rad Power Bikes
From $1.65B Unicorn to $13.2M Garage Sale: The Pandemic E-Bike Bust
Rad Power Bikes, the Seattle-based e-bike maker that became the largest direct-to-consumer electric bike brand in North America during the COVID-19 boom, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2025 and was ultimately sold to Life Electric Vehicles Holdings for just $13.2 million — a fire-sale price for a company that had raised nearly $330 million in venture capital and once commanded a $1.65 billion valuation. The collapse marked the most prominent casualty of a brutal e-bike shakeout that took out nearly a dozen VC-backed micromobility companies as pandemic-era demand evaporated and a fresh round of Trump-era tariffs on Chinese components squeezed already-thin margins.
Aspiration Partners
ESG Fintech Darling's Co-Founder Sentenced to 14 Years for $248M Fraud
Aspiration Partners marketed itself as the ethical, socially conscious alternative to traditional banking — a fintech where customers could choose their own fees and all funds were guaranteed fossil-fuel-free. Co-founder Joe Sanberg positioned himself as an anti-poverty crusader and climate champion, attracting investment from Wall Street heavyweights and Hollywood elites including billionaire Steve Ballmer. Behind the green facade, Sanberg was running a massive fraud scheme. He inflated Aspiration's revenue by routing transactions through entities he secretly controlled, making them appear as legitimate third-party sales. Together with board member Ibrahim AlHusseini, Sanberg fabricated bank statements to fraudulently secure $145 million in loans. When the scheme collapsed, investors and lenders were left with $248 million in losses. The Department of Justice arrested Sanberg in March 2025, and he pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in October 2025. In 2026, he was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison — one of the harshest sentences for a fintech fraud case in recent memory.
WeWork Inc.
From $47 Billion to Zero: The WeWork Implosion
WeWork was never a tech company — it was a real estate company with a charismatic founder and a dangerous lease model. At its $47 billion SoftBank valuation, WeWork was losing $219,000 per hour. The IPO collapsed when its S-1 filing revealed the staggering gap between narrative and reality. It filed for Chapter 11 in November 2023.
Credit Suisse Group AG
167 Years of Swiss Banking Destroyed by a Decade of Scandals
Credit Suisse wasn't killed by a single event — it died from a thousand scandals. Spying on executives, money laundering for drug cartels, a $5.5 billion loss from Archegos, $10 billion in frozen Greensill funds — each scandal chipped away at the trust that is a bank's only real asset. In March 2023, depositors pulled $10 billion per day. UBS acquired it for $3.2 billion in a government-brokered shotgun wedding.
SVB Financial Group (Silicon Valley Bank)
48 Hours: How Twitter Killed a $200 Billion Bank
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 48 hours — the largest U.S. bank failure since 2008 and the first Twitter-driven bank run in history. SVB had loaded up on long-dated Treasury bonds during the zero-interest-rate era. When the Fed hiked rates, those bonds lost billions in value. SVB announced a $2.25 billion capital raise on a Wednesday. By Friday, depositors — a uniquely concentrated group of VCs and tech founders — had pulled $42 billion. The FDIC seized the bank.
FTX Trading Ltd.
The $8 Billion Crypto Fraud
FTX went from a $32 billion valuation to bankruptcy in 10 days. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for orchestrating one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history. Customer funds were secretly transferred to Alameda Research, FTX's sister hedge fund, to cover losses.
Archegos Capital Management
$20 Billion Vanished in 48 Hours: The Secret Leverage Bomb
Bill Hwang turned $200 million into $36 billion using total return swaps — derivatives that let him build massive positions without disclosing them. When ViacomCBS stock dropped, Archegos's hidden leverage imploded. The banks that had lent him money (Credit Suisse lost $5.5B, Nomura $2.9B) were forced to liquidate positions in a fire sale. Total losses: $20+ billion in two days.
Greensill Capital
The $10 Billion Supply Chain Fantasy
Lex Greensill convinced investors — including Credit Suisse clients and SoftBank's Vision Fund — that his supply chain finance firm was worth billions. It wasn't. Greensill Capital packaged invoices from risky, concentrated counterparties (including Sanjeev Gupta's GFG Alliance) and sold them as 'safe as cash' investments. When GFG defaulted, the entire house of cards collapsed, freezing $10 billion in CS funds.
Nikola Corporation
The Truck That Rolled Downhill: A $30 Billion Fraud on Video
Nikola claimed to have built a hydrogen-electric semi-truck. Founder Trevor Milton raised billions from investors and partnered with GM on the strength of a video showing the Nikola One 'in motion.' Hindenburg Research revealed the truck was actually rolling downhill — the motors were off. Milton was convicted of securities fraud in 2022. Nikola filed Chapter 11 in 2025.
Wirecard AG
The €1.9 Billion That Didn't Exist
German fintech darling Wirecard rose to DAX 30 status before collapsing when auditors discovered €1.9 billion in 'cash balances' that simply didn't exist. CEO Markus Braun was arrested. COO Jan Marsalek fled to Russia. It was the biggest accounting scandal in post-war German history.
Luckin Coffee Inc.
$310 Million in Fake Sales: The Chinese Starbucks Fraud
Luckin Coffee claimed it would overtake Starbucks in China with 4,500 stores and AI-powered coffee. It went public on NASDAQ at a $4.2 billion valuation. Then an anonymous report revealed that Luckin had fabricated $310 million in sales — more than half of its reported revenue. The stock crashed 80% in a day, the CEO was fired, and the company was delisted. It later emerged that the fraud was orchestrated by the COO and several regional managers.
Post Office Limited
900+ Wrongful Prosecutions from Buggy Software — Britain's Greatest Miscarriage of Justice
The British Post Office scandal stands as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted over 900 subpostmasters for theft, fraud, and false accounting based on data from Horizon, an accounting system developed by Fujitsu. The system had known bugs since 1999 that caused false financial shortfalls, but the Post Office insisted it was robust and actively suppressed evidence of faults during criminal and civil cases. 236 subpostmasters were imprisoned. Thousands more lost livelihoods, homes, savings, and reputations. The scandal was linked to at least 13 suicides. In 2019, a High Court ruling exposed Horizon's defects and found subpostmasters' contracts were unfair. Courts began quashing convictions in 2020, and in May 2024 Parliament passed unprecedented legislation overturning hundreds of convictions in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. An ITV drama, 'Mr Bates vs The Post Office', broadcast in January 2024, transformed the scandal into a national reckoning. The total cost of compensation is expected to exceed £1 billion. The Metropolitan Police opened criminal investigations into Post Office and Fujitsu personnel.