Meg Whitman

The startup, headed by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, promised short-form content designed specifically for mobile phones, and investors poured $1.75 billion into the idea. The duo’s instincts about what would sell proved wrong.

The company said Wednesday that it would wind down its operations and plans to sell its assets. “Quibi is not succeeding,” its top executives, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, bluntly declared in a letter posted online. The video platform — designed for people who were out and about to watch on their phones — was one of a slew of new streaming services started to challenge Netflix over the past few years, most of which were part of much bigger tech and entertainment companies, like Apple and Disney.

Streaming service Quibi is exploring several strategic options including a possible sale, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company founded by Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg struggles to sign up subscribers in a competitive online-video marketplace.

Quibi CEO Meg Whitman will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night. She’s one of four current or former Republicans who will be speaking at the convention this week.

Two veteran executives with contrasting styles are launching Quibi, an on-the-go streaming service, during a pandemic. Its success hinges, in part, on whether the duo can overcome their sometimes clashing styles and leverage their more than 80 years of combined business experience. At its current pace, Quibi will sign up fewer than two million paying subscribers by the end of the app’s first year, a person familiar with its operations said, well under its original target of 7.4 million.

Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg says his and Meg Whitman’s new short-form mobile streaming service’s content is so good, there’s no way it can’t find an audience.

Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, who is 67 days away from the launch of the company’s ambitious new streaming service, claimed that the company doesn’t really see the likes of Netflix, Hulu or Disney Plus as rivals.

“We’re going up on a high wire and there’s no safety net underneath it,” says Jeffrey Katzenberg, the founder of the upcoming short-form video streamer that is paying top dollar and making star-friendly deals to counter questions about whether consumers will respond.

TV is changing dramatically. Here are the key executives at the large media giants, wireless carriers, tech companies and everyone that is stuck in between as they duke it out for your time and money.

Quibi, the upcoming video service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman, is getting two shows from Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media as well as director Catherine Hardwicke. Katzenberg and Whitman announced the new projects at Variety’s Innovate summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where the duo also shared some additional details on the technology and roadmap of the service.