It’s a new year, and the tech industry’s woes remain: Alphabet joins Amazon, Meta and Salesforce in making staff cuts amidst economic hardships.
Alphabet’s “Other Bets” division is leading the way. As suggested by its name, these divisions are separate from search and ads. Many of them have emerged from Alphabet X’s moonshot factory, taking on an in-house accelerator role.
Verily, a life science firm, experienced a 15% cut to their staff this week–approximately 240 people.
CEO Stephen Gillett said in a blog post, “We have had to make some difficult choices and cannot do everything, despite the promise of these programs led by talented Veeps. Some innovations will integrate into our other core solutions; others will be redeployed or unfortunately depart. We are grateful for the contributions of those who helped make Verily what it is today—it’s hard to see valued friends and colleagues go.”
Intrinsic, Alphabet’s robot software firm, has been hit hard with 40 layoffs – TechGround confirms this amounts to 20% of its staff. This is a dramatic shift from the division’s rapid growth; in the past year they acquired Vicarious and Open Robotics (announced just last month).
Intrinsic’s leadership has made the hard decision to let go a number of team members, communicated directly with those impacted. We are doing our best to offer proactive support. This will allow us to prioritize initiatives like building our software and AI platform, integrating Vicarious & OSRC (Open Robotics’ commercial arm), and collaborating with industry partners in pursuit of our mission. Though difficult, we believe this is necessary for long-term success.
Intrinsic’s big hit is a great start for the fledgling company, but with many competitors in the market it’s unclear how much of an impact this will have.
This week, X robotics alum Mineral proudly graduated from the lab.
