At least $1.48 billion in VC funding has gone up in smoke this year as the list of dead startups grows

unicorn horse dead

Where there's life, there's death, and Silicon Valley is no different.

For every billion dollar unicorn, there are endless numbers of start-ups that have passed into the ether — laying off their engineers in matching, branded t-shirts; closing down their game rooms filled with ping-pong tables; and leaving heartfelt goodbye notes for customers on their soon-to-be defunct websites.

We're halfway through 2017 and already a group of startups that together raised $1.48 billion have shut down.

From February's shuttering of Beepi, a used car exchange once valued at $560 million, to this week's closure of gadget maker Jawbone, which was once worth $3 billion, these are the start ups we've lost so far in 2017 — and one whose demise looks imminent. May they disrupt in peace.

Beepi: 2013 — February 2017

Capital raised: $150 million
Peak valuation: $560 million

Beepi, the website that brought together car buyers and used-car sellers, shuttered in February. Both Fair.com and used-car dealer DGDG considered buying Beepi, but ultimately decided against it. In the end, Beepi ran out of money.

Quixey: 2009 — February 2017

Capital raised: $133 million
Peak valuation: $600 million

Quixey, a mobile search engine that was able to crawl apps, laid off most of its staff at the end of February. It seems the company never found its footing or a steady revenue source, despite replacing its founding CEO, Tomer Kagan, in March 2016.

Yik Yak: 2013–April 2017

Capital raised: $73 million
Peak valuation: $400 million

Yik Yak — the anonymous social media app that was at the center of several college harassment scandals — announced its closure on April 28, after struggling to keep users on its platform. The payment company Square acquired the Yik Yak engineering team days before the startup closed shop for a cool $3 million.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider