Wag took $300M from SoftBank to grow dog-walking fast — it filed bankruptcy in 2025

Wag, founded in Los Angeles in 2015 by Joshua Viner, Jonathan Viner and Jason Meltzer, matched dog owners with on-demand walkers through an app, having previously raised only $68 million. On January 30, 2018, SoftBank's Vision Fund invested $300 million, valuing the company around $650 million and installing Hilary Schneider as CEO — a bet that capital could scale a two-sided marketplace faster than its main rival, Rover.

The growth-first push strained the vetting and safety systems that mattered most to customers trusting Wag with their pets: documented incidents included a contractor caught drinking in a client's apartment, a contractor stealing packages, and a dog found dead after a walk. A CNN investigation in September 2019 detailed the pattern. By late 2019, Wag's market share had fallen from roughly 23% to 16% against Rover, and California filings showed at least 92 Los Angeles employees laid off that year. SoftBank sold its entire stake back to Wag at a loss in December 2019.

Wag went public via a SPAC merger in 2022 at roughly a $350 million valuation, a fraction of its SoftBank-era peak. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 21, 2025, citing $69.5 million in losses from 2022 to 2024, pandemic-era revenue decline, and breached debt covenants; its stock was trading around $0.12 a share at filing before being delisted from Nasdaq that September.