Blippar's CEO held an emotional crisis meeting and furious insiders are terrified the firm won't survive the week

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Blippar cofounder and CEO Ambarish Mitra (left).

• Blippar CEO Ambarish Mitra held a crisis meeting with staff on Monday about the firm's imminent risk of collapse.
• According to one person who attended the meeting, Mitra was too emotional to finish his speech and new chief operating officer Libby Penn had to finish on his behalf.
• Blippar confirmed on Monday that it was close to administration thanks to one investor blocking an emergency fundraise from another backer.
• In a terse email to staff on Wednesday, Mitra said the situation remains deadlocked.
• Multiple sources told Business Insider that employees are furious with Blippar's leadership and are worried they won't be paid before Christmas if the firm collapses.
• It's a dramatic fall from grace for the much-hyped augmented reality startup, which two years ago claimed it was worth $1.5 billion.

Blippar's chief executive Ambarish Mitra held an emotional internal meeting with employees on Monday, warning them that the beleaguered company is perilously close to collapse as it desperately tries to raise new cash.

It's a dramatic fall from grace for the much-hyped augmented reality startup, which two years ago claimed it was worth $1.5 billion. Mitra seemed resigned to failure, according to one insider.

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The source said Mitra was too emotional to finish his speech and had to hand over to the firm's new chief operating officer Libby Penn to finish. Penn said Blippar's status remains uncertain as an investor dispute stands in the way of it raising the finance it needs to survive.

The source, who is not authorised to speak to the media, told Business Insider that the mood inside Blippar was "very low" and that employees were convinced the company would shutter in the next 48 hours. Staff are nervous they aren't going to be paid before Christmas and angry at how little they have been told, the person added.

Blippar's latest company accounts, dated March 2017, show that the firm employed 261 staff across its UK, US, Singapore and Delhi offices. LinkedIn data indicates the current figure is more like 125 employees.

Read more: Buzzy startup Blippar was said to be valued at $1 billion and held talks to sell to Snap. It is now on the brink of death.

Mitra sent a terse, company-wide update on Wednesday morning stating that Blippar had not yet found a resolution. In the email seen by BI, he said: "No further info to share at the moment. We are still trying everything we can to find a resolution."

Blippar said on Monday that it is trying to complete emergency fundraising after one of its backers, Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah, last week blocked a cash injection from another shareholder - the property tycoon Nick Candy.

According to the Sunday Times, Blippar chairman David Currie warned shareholders that the firm was on the brink of administration if it didn't receive the funding. Accounting firm David Rubin and Partners has reportedly been lined up as administrator.

Former Blippar loyalists say the firm is "a complete mess"

Blippar was founded in the UK in 2011 by Mitra, Omar Tayeb, Jessica Butcher and Steve Spencer, and is best known for its augmented reality app that identifies real-world objects.

Mitra told The Financial Times in 2015 that the company was worth $1.5 billion after he turned down an acquisition offer, which appeared to put Blippar firmly among the ranks of British unicorns. The firm has raised $150 million to date from backers including Khazanah, Candy, Lansdowne, and Qualcomm Ventures.

But Blippar sources cast doubt on Blippar's numbers and financial status in April last year, telling Business Insider that the firm was close to running out of money.

Former Blippar staff, some of whom held longtime senior positions, described the company to Business Insider as "a complete mess" this week.

One senior leaver with knowledge of Blippar's finances said: "I am not surprised by the latest news. Complete mess." Another former senior employee said: "I'm surprised they've lasted this long."

A third said the company had an "overblown self-belief" thanks to its one-time status as a first-mover in augmented reality. "Some people will try anything to keep a dead dog alive," the person said of the company's attempts to raise new funding.

Ambarish Mitra

Blippar's co-founders: Steve Spencer, Ambarish Mitra, Oscar Tayeb, and Jess Butcher.

Outside the company, the industry prognosis is gloomy. One well-placed source working in computer vision said the firm wasn't known for its technical prowess, despite specialising in the complex field of augmented reality.

"Strong computer vision candidates who went for interview there were a bit shocked at how lacking in knowledge their interviewers were," the person said.

Sources told Business Insider that Blippar tried to sell itself towards the end of last year, as the extent of its financial woes became clear. It tried to sell to Snapchat owner Snap Inc and SAP for considerably lower than its vaunted unicorn valuation, with an internally rumoured price tag of around $200 million (£160 million). When those talks fell through, Blippar shuttered its Silicon Valley office and lost its US commercial chief in the process.

Now the company must hope it can raise further funding from its existing backers.

Blippar did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Here's what it told TechCrunch on Monday:

"The rate of change in the AR industry resulted in a lack of standardisation across platforms and tools which has become a barrier to greater adoption and application of the technology. In response to these we refined our strategy to primarily focus on our SaaS self-service AR creation and publishing platform and we are on the path to accelerate the developments of this platform. Our goal is to unify and standardise all AR formats and make it easy for everybody to create AR.

"Our strategy and product roadmap to enable this goal has unanimous approval from our board, for which we require an additional amount of funding to accelerate our growth and fulfill our profitability plans. The additional funding has been secured and approved by the whole board, but ultimately requires shareholders' approval, which was given by all except one.

"Despite not participating in any further funding of the business, that shareholder took the decision to vote against the additional funding. We tried to reach an agreement with them that would allow the business to continue with these plans and have offered various solutions, and so far they have refused all proposals.

"Our board is still trying to negotiate with them and we hope to have a reasonable position at some point this week."

If you work at Blippar and would like to talk, or have information about its current situation, email sghosh@businessinsider.com.