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LeEco may not be around in the U.S. for much longer — the company’s big attempt to make a name for itself here seems to have failed.
LeEco is having a rough time. Less than a year ago the company started making its big push in the United States, and as part of that it launched a number of phones and TVs, and purchased a large 49-acre Silicon Valley property from Yahoo. At the time, CEO Jia Yueting said that the building would end up being an “EcoCity that houses 12,000 employees.”
Unfortunately for LeEco, it’s big U.S. push hasn’t really caught on, and that EcoCity may not end up being its Silicon Valley home after all. According to a report from Reuters, the company has sold the property to Genzon Group for a hefty $260 million.
More: First images leak of upcoming LeEco flagship phone with curved display
“We’ve always envisioned EcoCity would be an open environment that would be a place for our employees, our partners and the community to collaborate,” the company said in an emailed statement to Digital Trends. “LeEco has been working to identify additional investors as well as a development partner but we have nothing to announce at this time.”
The news makes sense. We already knew that LeEco was suffering some money issues, as admitted by Yueting in an email to employees in November. Reuters has also since reported that the company has significantly reduced the number of U.S. employees that it has, and suggests that LeEco has halved its Silicon Valley workforce. Not only that, but reports indicate that the company is struggling to pay debts to suppliers and business partners.
It will be interesting to see how LeEco fares over the next few years. The phones it unveiled last year were actually pretty solid — and very powerful for the price. We don’t really know how well those phones actually sold, but given the recent news, we’re willing to bet they didn’t sell all that well.