Alphabet's Robotaxi Arm Waymo Cuts Staff Again 'As Part Of Normal Course Of Business'

Alphabet's robotaxi arm Waymo has reduced its staff for the third time in 2023 as the company undergoes a restructuring.

"A small number of Waymo teams recently made adjustments to their teams as part of normal course of business," a Waymo spokesperson said Tuesday, The San Francisco Standard reported. The company had around 2,500 employees in January.

The exact number of employees affected by the recent round of layoffs is unknown. Waymo did not immediately respond to International Business Times' request for comment.

Layoffs at the Alphabet unit came about a month after Waymo announced that its 24/7 autonomous ride-hailing service, Waymo One, was going on tour across Los Angeles starting in October.

"Starting beachside in Santa Monica and Venice, the Waymo One Tour will make multiple stops across LA neighborhoods where people eager to experience the future of transportation will have an opportunity to receive a temporary code to try our rider-only service," the company said last month.

Tuesday's reported cuts mark Waymo's third round of workforce reductions this year.

The self-driving vehicle company also eliminated 137 jobs or around 8% of its workforce in March. Many of the cuts reportedly hit engineering roles. At the time, Waymo co-CEOs Dmitry Dolgov and Tekedra Mawakana said in an internal email that the March layoffs and earlier reductions would allow the company "to ensure that we have capacity to further invest and grow in key engineering areas, which is critical to our success."

Just days before the March layoffs, Waymo announced that it had moved to expand its autonomous rides testing into Los Angeles. The company already provides driverless rides in San Francisco, California and Chandler, Arizona.

In January, when tech giant Alphabet announced 12,000 in job cuts, Waymo also "quietly" eliminated some of its workers. The robotaxi company said at the time that the reductions were "a limited number of roles."

Posts from former employees revealed that the layoffs at Waymo in January affected various departments, including recruiters, engineers working on perception and vehicle technicians.

Waymo robotaxis continue to cruise the streets of San Francisco. The city became the country's first major city with two driverless fleets: Waymo and General Motors-owned Cruise.

However, safety concerns remain as some activists criticize the potential hazards involved with riding driverless cars. Even among state and San Francisco officials, there is reportedly a divide regarding the safety of autonomous vehicles.

Unlike some of Alphabet's subsidiaries, Waymo hasn't been big enough to have a dedicated line on the tech behemoth's balance sheets, but in the Google parent's third quarter 2022 earnings, a 27% dip in profits compared to 2021 was noted by analysts.

Alphabet's "other bets," where Waymo falls under, were among the biggest contributors to the tech giant's losses in Q3 2022.