Autonomous vehicle company Cruise is laying off “nearly” 50% of its workforce — cuts that extend to the CEO and several other top executives — as it prepares to shut down operations. What remains of Cruise will move under parent company General Motors as the automaker directs its resources towards improving its hands-free driver assistance system Super Cruise — and eventually rolls out personal autonomous vehicles.
The layoffs were announced by Craig Glidden, Cruise’s president and chief administrative officer, according to a companywide email that TechCrunch has viewed and verified with sources. Individuals who were affected received a separate email from Cruise Chief Human Resources Officer Nilka Thomas.
CEO Marc Whitten will depart from Cruise this week, along with Thomas, chief safety officer Steve Kenner, and global head of public policy Rob Grant.
Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s chief technologist, will stay on through the end of April to help with the transition.
“As a result of the change in strategy we announced in December, today we will part with nearly 50% of our Cruise employee base, through a reduction in force,” the email from Glidden reads. “Anyone who has been through a reduction knows that days like this are extremely difficult, and today is no different. With our move away from the ride-hail business and toward providing autonomous vehicles to customers alongside GM, our staffing and resource needs have dramatically changed. Today’s actions align our teams to our new needs, and focus our efforts on continuing to build world-class AV technology.”
As of January 2024, Cruise employed about 2,100 people, according to sources who based the estimates on the on the number of members on a Slack channel for company announce …