Bird, the e-scooter operator that pioneered the alternative form of transport, on Wednesday declared bankruptcy in the US.

The company said it has started Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in Florida.

Those proceedings do not include its European and Canadian subsidiary operations, which will continue to operate normally.

Bird is one of Malta’s two major rental e-scooter operators, alongside Bolt. Both those companies will be forced to shut down their Malta operations in March, following a government decision to ban rental e-scooters from that date.

In a statement announcing its bankruptcy proceedings, Bird said it was undergoing the process to position the company for “long-term, sustainable growth”.

Bird was founded by a former executive at Uber and Lyft and quickly drew more than $1 billion in venture capital funding from Silicon Valley.

The company however faced significant financial challenges when the COVID-19 pandemic took millions of people off the streets and reduced the need for its e-scooters.

When it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, the concerns kept mounting as the value of its shares plummeted by 90 per cent in six months.

One year later, it admitted that it had inflated its revenue for the previous years.

Bird’s founder, Travis VanderZanden, quit in June and the company was delisted from the NYSE in September.