In February 2024, Apple pulled the brakes on two ambitious projects that has now led to layoffs in California. According to a Bloomberg report, in the past month, the company had decided to abandon its electric and autonomous car project and efforts to develop next-generation displays for smart watches.
This is company’s first big wave of post-pandemic job cuts amid a broader wave of tech industry consolidation.
According to the report, the display project faced its own challenges, including design hurdles, difficulty finding reliable suppliers and keeping production costs under control.
According to reports to Regional Authority, the Apple iPhone maker notified that 614 worker in multiple office on March 28 are losing their jobs with the layoffs are becoming in effective on May 27.
Most of the layoffs occurred at Apple’s main car project office in Santa Clara. However, jobs were cut in smaller satellite offices. While some affected employees were lucky enough to be transferred to other Apple teams focused on artificial intelligence and personal robotics, the overall impact was significant, the Bloomberg report added.
Employees were laid off from eight Santa Clara offices under the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act (also known as WARN). But it is not clear which departments or projects the workers were involved in.
Notably, at least 87 of the laid-off workers were placed in a secret Apple space dedicated to developing next-generation display technologies. The rest of the employees worked at various locations related to the company’s scrap car project.
According to reports, 371 employees have been let go from Apple’s main car-related office in Santa Clara, California. Dozens of other impacts were reported at multiple satellite sites. In some cases, former members of Apple’s car team have been moved to other projects, such as artificial intelligence or personal robotics.
Earlier, this week Amazon announced a fresh round of layoff, this time at its cloud computing business AWS.
In recent months, video game maker Electronic Arts said it’s removing about 5% of its workforce.
