Alphabet's Waymo Cuts Staff Days After Announcing Driverless Rides Expansion; Engineering Roles Largely Affected

Waymo, the self-driving technology company owned by Google parent Alphabet, has reduced its workforce by 8%, with the latest staff cuts reportedly affecting mainly engineering roles. The said layoffs round came just days after it was revealed that Waymo was expanding its driverless rides testing into Los Angeles.

The company told Reuters Wednesday that the latest staff cuts affected 137 employees. Prior to the latest round of layoffs, Waymo "quietly" laid off workers in January, days after Alphabet slashed 6% of its global workforce, affecting around 12,000 people. At the time, some members of the Waymo team were affected, as per TechCrunch.

The Information, citing an internal email, reported that the second layoffs round in 2023 means around 209 employees have been let go so far.

"This step, combined with the January reductions, allows us to ensure that we have capacity to further invest and grow in key engineering areas, which is critical to our success," Waymo co-CEOs Dmitri Dolgov and Tekedra Mawakana said in the internal email.

"We took a thoughtful approach and feel confident that we're providing for each of these former teammates through this transition. We're confident that we have the right teams in place to achieve success for Waymo," the company said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday.

While the January layoffs mostly affected general and administrative staff, the latest reductions were focused on the engineering department, the outlet reported.

There were also rumors that Waymo was shutting down its trucking program, Waymo Via, TechCrunch reported. However, the autonomous driving Alphabet unit denied the claims, stating that while it would scale down on the freight trucking project, it will continue developing the project to become applicable for all business lines.

News of the latest round of Waymo layoffs came days after Dolgov confirmed that the company had moved to expand its driverless rides testing into Los Angeles. Waymo has already charged driverless rides for residents of Chandler, Arizona, since 2019, and it has implemented paid rides in San Francisco.

"Following a rigorous cycle of validation and safety readiness evaluation, @Waymo is starting fully-autonomous (no human driver) testing in LA," Dolgov said in a tweet.

In January, Waymo announced that it made history by passing the 1 million-mile mark "with no human driver on public roads." The milestone was reached weeks after Waymo opened its autonomous ride-hailing service in Phoenix in December.