Bird, an electric scooter company, has filed for bankruptcy

Electric scooter company Bird said Wednesday it had filed an application for bankruptcy protectionanother sign that the shine is starting to fade on this once vibrant part of personal transportation.

To help the company continue to operate, the company said, it had secured $25 million in financing from Apollo Global Management’s commercial lender, MidCap Financial, and the company’s second lien lenders. Michael Washinushi, Bird’s interim chief executive, will stay on as the company pursues a turnaround plan that could include asset sales.

Based in Miami, Bird had warned investors a year ago that unless it raises money, it might not be able to “continue as a going concern.”

Other startups in the sector have struggled. Micromobility.com, formerly known as Helbiz, was deleted from the Nasdaq on Tuesday; and another rival, Tier Mobility, had its third round of layoffs last month.

Bird, one of the fastest startups to reach a billion-dollar valuation and become a so-called unicorn, has long positioned itself as a partner in helping cities become greener. It started in 2017 and quickly expanded, fueled by major Silicon Valley investors including Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners. It raised more than half a billion in venture capital and went public in 2021 after merging with a shell company known as a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC.

But Bird’s losses mounted, and the company was deleted of the New York Stock Exchange in September. That came after it admitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had overstated its revenues for more than two years; its founder, Travis VanderZanden, left in June.

Bird scooters can be found in more than 350 cities, from Rome to San Francisco. (The company’s Canadian and European businesses are not part of the bankruptcy, Bird noted, and will continue to operate normally.)

There have been many complaints about abandoned rental scooters that have cluttered sidewalks and parks in recent years. Paris banned e-scooter rentals this year, a first for a European capital, although it still allows private e-scooters.