Swedish manufacturer Cake, which makes exclusively electric off-road motorcycles, has filed for bankruptcy. DiGITAL, a Swedish media outlet, broke the news last Thursday, although there has been no official announcement of the filing from Cake itself.
According to Electrek, Cake’s bankruptcy filing follows news of the suspension of salary payments in January and that the filing was forced when one of its main investors withdrew from the company during a recent funding round.
Cake had recently started delivering its latest model, the Bukk, and had published a press release at the end of January indicating its plans to expand its presence in Europe.
Cake’s CEO, Stefan Ytterborn, was quoted by the Swedish media as saying that there were a number of reasons for Cake’s current situation. He said: “It is not one, but several circumstances that have led us to this situation. Climate issues are no longer in focus, we are in recession. It’s about us, but it’s also about the venture capital ecosystem. Right now, it’s completely dead, there are no buyers at the later stage that Cake is in.”
Founded in 2016, Cake has become a recognized figure in the world of electric motorcycles, building distinctive and minimalist bikes, all with a functional aesthetic and strange names like “Kalk”, or the aforementioned “Bukk”, derived from an ancient language rooted on the island of Gotland, which lies in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.