At the start of 2022, Bolt was worth 11 billion dollars. Today it is worth 300 million - a 97 percent drop. The online payment processing company is now raising bridge financing of at most 27 million dollars, which is less than half a percent of its old valuation.

Ryan Breslow, who founded the firm in 2014 aged 19 after dropping out of Stanford, returned as chief executive last year following a series of legal battles with investors. He is not giving up. "I believe in Bolt more than anyone can imagine. I believe Bolt is worth saving," he said.

He backed that statement with his own money - 5 million dollars going into the round personally. The rest is supposed to come from existing investors, and that is where the more serious part of the story begins.

The round carries a "pay to play" clause. Any of the roughly one hundred existing investors who does not take part now loses a large share of their stake. That is not an invitation, it is an ultimatum - and it usually gets written when a founder is not confident the money will arrive on its own. Breslow estimates at least 15 million will be raised, but admits not everyone is expected to join.

Bridge financing is short-term money to reach the next big round, and it is taken for two reasons: either the company is doing well and needs six to twelve months to hit its next target, or it is running out of cash. Breslow declined to say how much money Bolt has left. He claims it is approaching profitability and returning to growth after years of declining revenue.

The announcement says the money will also serve to "clean up legacy obligations". Asked what exactly that means, Breslow did not answer. When a company describes its own debts as inherited - inherited from whom, if the founder is the same man?

This comes two years after an attempted 450-million-dollar round at a 14-billion valuation. That deal collapsed after existing investors, including BlackRock and Hedosophia, filed suit to block it - once it emerged that one investor listed as a lead backer denied taking part at all, and another offered 250 million dollars in "marketing credits" instead of cash. The lawsuit was later withdrawn by all sides. This time, Breslow says, the board and a majority of preferred shareholders approved the round.

The number that says the most is not one of the billions: in 2021 Bolt had 900 employees, today it has around 60. Breslow presents that not as a problem but as an advantage - artificial intelligence, he says, makes the company more efficient: "We are doing probably ten times more, shipping ten times faster because of AI." Anyone who has laid off 93 percent of their people would want that sentence to be true.

His ambition remains large: "I think we can be the Lyft to Stripe's Uber." Note the modesty in the comparison - Lyft is second, not first. He has friends, he says, who offered him 10 million dollars each to start something new and leave this nightmare behind. He does not want to.