In this articleOPEN your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTwatch now5:5605:56Opendoor chairman Keith Rabois: We're going to get back to merit and excellenceSquawk on the StreetOpendoor co-founder and newly minted board chair Keith Rabois said remote work and a "bloated" workforce have been a drag on the company's culture, as he vowed to slash headcount."There's 1,400 employees at Opendoor.
I don't know what most of them do.
We don't need more than 200 of them," Rabois told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Friday.The online real-estate platform on Wednesday appointed former Shopify executive Kaz Nejatian as its new CEO after investor pressure caused his predecessor, Carrie Wheeler, to resign last month.
Opendoor, which is based in San Francisco, also named Rabois as chairman and said Eric Wu, who served as the company's first CEO before stepping down in 2023, would return to the board.The announcement sent Opendoor s soaring 78% on Thursday, before the stock slid more than 12% on Friday.
It is still up almost 500% this year, after an army of retail investors pushed up the stock price when hedge fund manager Eric Jackson began touting the company.Stock Chart IconStock chart iconOpendoor year-to-date stock chart.Opendoor's involves using nology to buy and sell s, pocketing the gains.Nothing has fundamentally imved for the company since Jackson bought s of Opendoor in July.
Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin with meager near-term growth spects.Rabois said he has a "high level view of the strategy" that's needed to transform Opendoor, and that the headcount reductions are necessary to resolve the company's cash burn."The culture was broken," Rabois said.
"These people were working remotely. That doesn't work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person.
We're going to return to our roots."He added that Opendoor "went down this DEI path," referring to diversity, equity and inclusion."We're gonna fix all that," Rabois said.Nejatian said in a post on X on Friday that he's ready to start in person at the beginning of next week.
"Yes. I'll be in the office first thing Monday morning and first thing every Monday morning," he wrote.
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