Cruise, an autonomous car company, has fired 50 % of the workforce. This is a reduction in CEO and several other top executives because we are preparing to stop the operation. The rest of the cruise will move under the General Motors of the parent company, in order to instruct resources to improve the hands free driver astance system super cruise, and eventually develop personal autonomous vehicles under the General Motors of the parent company.
Rayoff was announced by CRAIG GLIDDEN, the president and highest manager of the cruise, according to the company’s company -wide e -mail, which was viewed and verified by TechCrunch with information sources. The affected individual received another e -mail from Nirka Thomas, the Cruise’s Supreme Personnel Officer.
CEO MARC WHITTEN will depart from CRUISE this week with Thomas, STEVE Kenner, the highest safety officer, and the Global Public Policy Rob Grant.
MO ELSHENAWY, a cruise chief technologist, continues until the end of April to support the transition.
“As a result of the change in the strategy announced in December, we will let go of almost 50 % of the cruise employee’s basis today through forced reductions,” says GLIDDEN’s email. “Everyone who has experienced the reduction knows that such a day is very difficult and the same is the same today. To provide an autonomous driving car with GM away from the boarding business. The needs of the staff and resources have been dramatically changed to build a world -class AV technology.
As of January 2024, CRUISE hired about 2,100 people. This is based on the information on the estimation of the number of members of the Slack channel for the company’s presentation. In other words, more than 1,000 employees may have been affected by Reof.
“Cruise has shared a difficult decision to say goodbye to about 50 % of the labor force,” he wrote in a statement written by email. “We are grateful for their passion and contribution to reach this stage. Our focus is focusing on the next chapter with retirement package and career support. However, it is not a simple decision, but we are focusing on the large -scale autonomous autonomous with efforts with General Motors.
GM (after the Layoffs was announced internally), the completion of the acquisition of GM CRUISE HOLDINGS LLC following the approval of the GM gm offer by a cruise board (after the reef was announced internally), pressed. I sent the release. Cruise is now a GM subsidiary.
All employees who are fired will stay on the company’s salary until April 5 and will be on benefits until the end of April. The affected workers will receive a retirement and benefits for eight weeks. Long -term employees provide a two -week salary and benefits every three years. All employees will receive a three -month company payment COBRA coverage and a one -year Linkedin Premium subscription to support job hunting.
Rayoff will be held nearly two months later, saying that GM will no longer provide funds to the development of the commercial robot tax business, and instead focuses on building personal automatic driving technology.
According to the details of the company’s fourth quarter revenue calls, automakers plan to save up to 1 billion dollars a year by terminating the cruise rotaxi development program. At that time, CFO Paul Jacobson stated that the expected cost reduction was based on the assumption that “cruise employees are completely integrated into GM by the year.”
In mid -January, cruise management began to expand our employees to employees, according to the information that was familiar with this issue. In an email to a cruise employee, CEO’s Mark Witten showed the next step after the cruise board met. According to some sources, the meeting occurred on Monday.
The cruise employees were blindly blind in the GM decision of drawing a plug in the Robotaxi development program, but have hoped for such presentations for several weeks.
The sources spoken to Techniccrunch said that since GM was waiting for the next step, they were hardly working since GM’s announcement, not lymbo. In the afternoon of Monday, GLIDDEN sends a slack message to the employees, saying that they are hoping to share “some news about tomorrow’s transition plan”, and “plan your work at home. I advised me like.
“Thank you for the patience during this time. I know that uncertainties were difficult, but I navigated the past few weeks with grace and professionalism,” GLIDDEN wrote.
Glidden was previously an executive vice president of GM law and policy, but car manufacturers assigned his role on a cruise in November 2023.
On October 2, 2023, Cruise Robota was a pedestrian thrown into the road by a human -led vehicle. After that, Robotaxi dragged a pedestrian. The pedestrians were stuck under the car.
Cruise staff did not immediately share the related information with the authorities. When it was revealed, the California’s Ministry of Automobile and the Public Interest Business Committee immediately stopped the company’s management permit. Later, the cruise contacted the entire Robotaki fleet in the United States, and many of the leadership teams, including Kyle Fogt, a co -founder and CEO, resigned.
After setting up a new leadership, including the permanent high -safety officer, the cruise was ready for the renewal in Austin earlier this year. The company was enhancing the safety system by spending most of the 2024 tests in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston and Bay Areas. The two sources familiar with the problem told Techniccrunch that the company was ready to implement a modified sensor solution called RHINO.
In June 2024, GM had a total of $ 850 billion in cruises and had a total of nearly $ 10 billion of cruise shares in 2016. In September, Elchenawi, the president and chief technique of the cruise, threw a huge party for the cruise staff.
Previous versions included a cruise statement with a 40 % layoff count. The cruise later fixed the statement and reflected the Glidden email. This stated that almost 50 % of workers would be fired.
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