Domestika’s withdrawal continues in the Spanish market. The American firm specialized in online training courses plans to apply an ERE to dismiss 89 people, 65% of its workforce. The measure affects the subsidiary Estudios de Grabación, based in Madrid and specialized in the production of academic and promotional content.
The company, considered a unicorn as it is valued at more than 1,000 million euros, uses “economic, organizational and production” reasons, according to a statement made public by the workers’ representation, advised by the Colectivo Ronda office.
“It is true that demand has fallen after the pandemic. The population spends less time at home and online training has suffered a decline, but in no case do we consider that the ERE is justified. At the beginning of last year, Domestika obtained 113 million of dollars in a round of investment”, laments an affected worker who prefers to remain anonymous.
According to this same source, the Madrid study is the only one that maintains operations in the entire European market. “In recent months, the company has closed its offices in France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany for the same reasons,” he says.
The ERE, which is in the negotiation period, will cause the Domestika structure in Spain to be even smaller. In March, the company announced another ERE to 88 people from the subsidiary DMSTK SL, specialized in administrative and marketing tasks. Part of these jobs have been automated with the ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence platform, as the workers explained to this newspaper. In addition, last year, the company already fired 70 more people between the two companies, a movement that the workers considered as a “covert ERE”.
In this new wave of layoffs, the impact of AI does not seem to be significant, although the company “is carrying out tests to automate some post-production tasks,” says the same worker. The Recording Studio staff does not work remotely either due to the nature of their activity, which requires them to be in person when recording content.
The company is based in Silicon Valley although it was founded in Madrid in the early 2000s (the headquarters were moved to the US shortly after). It is directed by Julio G. Cotorruelo and Tomy Pelluz and bills about 60 million dollars, about 56 million euros.
