The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2013
🌱
2013
Founded by a silicon-photonics pioneer
Andrew Rickman — who took Bookham from lab bench to the FTSE — starts again, aiming photonic chips at biosensing.
Wikipedia
Aug 2021
📈
Aug 2021
Public via SPAC at ~$1.2B$1.2B
The “clinic on the wrist” sensor pitch lists on the NYSE; filings show most revenue comes from a single customer, widely reported to be Apple.
SEC filing
2022
2022
The one-customer problem
The key customer scales back, financing dries up as rates rise, and going-concern warnings follow.
Bloomberg
2022–23
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–23
Glassdoor reviews are consistent about the internal cause: brilliant engineers scattered across too many simultaneous projects, steered by leadership reviewers described as toxic and openly feuding — a company, staff said, that oversold its technology and chased more than it could ship.
Jan 2023
🪦
Jan 2023
Chapter 11 — joins the Unitard Club 💔
A pre-packaged bankruptcy hands the company to its noteholders; shareholders are wiped out barely 17 months after the debut.
Court filing
2023
2023
Creditors take the keys
Delisted from the NYSE, the slimmed-down company continues under creditor ownership — the $1.2B equity story over.
Court filing
$1.2Bof peak value erased · 10 years
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Rockley Photonics was a UK silicon-photonics company known for biosensing technology and ties to Apple, going public via SPAC in 2021 near a $1.2B valuation. The loss of a key customer and financing pressures led to a sharp decline, and the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023, wiping out nearly all equity value.
As investor money dried up with rising rates, staff recounted repeated rounds of mass layoffs and constant changes of direction — a company that oversold its technology and chased more than it could ship.
