Sonder
Proptech/hospitalityUSA
New to Unitard
💀 Dead / Bankrupt
Peak $2.2 BillionToday
~-99%
from peak
- 🦄Became a unicorn2019
- 📈Peak valuation$2.2 Billion ’22
- 💔Became a UnitardNov 2025
- 💸Last valuationWiped out
🔥 Raised & burned
$680M
Total raised
$164K/day
Burned · 11.4y alive
Funding: Skift/Wikipedia
Current status
Chapter 7 liquidation (Nov 2025)
The rise & fall
7 moments · 2014–2025The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2014
2014
Founded in Montreal
Francis Davidson turns a college-apartment subletting hustle into Sonder: leased apartments run like boutique hotels.
Wikipedia
2019
2019
Joins the unicorn club
A Series D values the apartment-hotel operator above $1B.
TechCrunch
Jan 2022
Jan 2022
The peak: a $2.2B SPAC debut$2.2B
Lists via SPAC in January 2022 — straight into the teeth of the SPAC bust.
SEC filing
2022–24
2022–24
The post-listing bleed
Persistent losses and a brutal slide leave the stock near worthless.
SEC filing
2024
2024
The Marriott lifeline
A 20-year licensing deal folds Sonder's apartments into Marriott's system — the survival plan.
Skift
2021–25
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2021–25
Staff braced for years — Glassdoor reviews counted layoffs roughly every six months from 2021 on — but the end was still abrupt: reviewers described some 1,400 people let go mid-shift, many learning from the news, promised severance never arriving.
Nov 2025
Nov 2025
Chapter 7 — joins the Unitard Club 💔
Marriott terminates the 20-year deal and Sonder files to liquidate; roughly $680M raised over a decade, gone.
SEC filing
$2.18Bof peak value erased · 11 years
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Sonder leased apartments and ran them as tech-enabled short-term rentals, debuting via SPAC at roughly a $2.2B market cap in January 2022. A brutal post-listing slide and persistent losses left it near worthless; after Marriott terminated a 20-year licensing deal, Sonder filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in November 2025.
Source: SEC filings; SPAC debut Jan 2022
Where they went
- Francis DavidsonCo-Founder & CEO (to 2025)Founder at Odessia
- Lucas Pellanco-founderCo-Founder at Mega
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-21. See our methodology.
