Sunlight Financial

How it happened

Sunlight Financial was a U.S. fintech platform connecting residential solar installers with financing lenders, taken public via SPAC merger in July 2021 at roughly a $1.3B valuation. Rising interest rates squeezed its loan business, its shares collapsed, and it filed for Chapter 11 in late 2023, wiping out nearly all equity value. On Glassdoor the SPAC itself marks the turn: employees who had rated it among the best companies they'd worked for described the culture souring once it listed — veterans pushed out, much-touted core values ringing hollow — and later reviews counted four rounds of layoffs, with some insiders arguing the decision to go public at all had doomed a business they loved.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.