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Where there's life, there's death, and Silicon Valley is no different.
For every thriving billion-dollar unicorn, there are endless numbers of start-ups that have passed onto the other side - laying off their engineers with their matching, branded t-shirts; closing down their game rooms filled with ping-pong tables; and leaving heartfelt goodbye notes for customers on their soon-to-be defunct websites.
As 2017 comes to a close, it's time to take a tally of some of the best-funded startups to shut their doors this year. Altogether, these companies raised $1.695 billion in venture capital funding. But it's now basically all gone, and investors can no longer hope to break even via an initial public offering or by having the companies acquired.
From February's shuttering of Beepi, a used-car exchange once valued at $560 million, to November's closure of the smart earbud maker Doppler Labs, which was formerly worth $235 million, these are 10 of the most highly funded startups to die in 2017.