Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo cuts more than 100 jobs

Google parent Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo is reportedly cutting more than 130 employees in its second round of layoffs this year, making it the latest US company to reduce its headcount. Waymo’s cuts will affect 8% of its workforce, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters and The Information on Wednesday, bringing the total number of employees laid off at the company this year to over 200. 

Alphabet said in January that it would slash 12,000 jobs, which would affect a large number of employees who support experimental projects. The Information reported that Waymo staff were also among those affected by the layoff, without sharing any specific numbers.

Activist investor TCI Fund Management told Reuters in November last year that Waymo is the biggest component of the Alphabet's Other Bets (the tech company's experimental early-stage ventures) segment, and it has not justified excessive investment. The companies belonging to its Other Bets group include robotic software firm Intrinsic, health-focused company Verily Life Sciences, robotaxi unit Waymo and delivery drones company Wing. In the third quarter, that group reported an operating loss of $1.6 billion.  

In January, Alphabet announced that Intrinsic slashed 40 employees or 20% of its total workforce. A week before it announced job cuts at Verily, in a reportedly ‘restructuring move’ and said that it will lay off over 200 employees, or about 15% of its workforce from that unit.   

Notably, Waymo recently announced plans to start testing fully driverless vehicles in Los Angeles and a pilot programme in San Francisco. The company received a permit for its driver-less pilot programme from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which allows autonomous vehicle (AV) companies to take passengers in test AVs without a driver. 

The job cuts at Waymo are part of wider layoffs across the auto and tech industry in the event of a gloomy global economic situation. Earlier this week, electric automaker Rivian Automotive said it will cut 6% of its staff in a span of six months after the company laid off another 5% of its roughly 14,000 employees. 

Automaker General Motors has reportedly laid off nearly 500 employees of the total workforce of 167,000. A Reuters report said that the company said it has “committed to $2 billion in cost savings in the next two years, which will come by reducing corporate expenses, overhead and complexity in its products".

Ford Motors also said in February that it plans to cut one in nine jobs in Europe, axing 3,800 roles in product development and administration as part of a drive to lower costs. 

Last week, in the technology sector, Twitter started laying off 200 of the social media giant’s remaining 2,000 employees in its latest round of job cuts, sources familiar with the matter told the New York Times, just weeks after CEO Elon Musk pledged to “stabilise the organisation” following several rounds of layoffs last fall that cut the company’s staff of roughly 7,500 by more than half. 

On the same week, Ericsson announced its latest round of layoffs, which is expected to affect over 8,500 or 8% of its nearly 106,000 global employees which the company said comes as "part of a cost-cutting plan intended to save roughly $880 million by the end of 2023". Further, Consulting major McKinsey’s job cuts could affect more than 4% of the company’s nearly 44,000 employees and accounting firm KPMG slashing of 2% of its staff (roughly 700 employees), as per various reports also grabbed headlines in recent weeks.