Report: GM Cuts 1,000 Jobs at Cruise After Ending Robotaxi Project
General Motors is reportedly cutting 1,000 jobs in its Cruise business unit after a previously announced decision to stop funding its robotaxi project.
The cuts amount to almost half of the workforce in Cruise, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Feb. 4), citing an internal memo and unnamed sources.
Several Cruise leaders will leave amid the restructuring, including CEO Marc Whitten, Chief Safety Officer Steve Kenner, Global Head of Public Policy Rob Grant, and Chief Human Resources Officer Nilka Thomas, according to the report.
GM did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
The company said in a Dec. 10 press release that it would no longer fund the robotaxi development work of Cruise — which it owned about 90% of at the time — because of “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.”
GM also said in the release that it planned to combine the Cruise and GM technical teams and realign its autonomous driving strategy by prioritizing the development of advanced driver assistance systems that it aims to lead to fully autonomous personal vehicles.
The automaker also said in the Dec. 10 press release that it had agreements with other Cruise shareholders that would raise GM’s ownership to more than 97% and that it would pursue the acquisition of the rest of the shares.
It added that if it acquired those shares and gained the approval of the Cruise board, it would restructure and refocus Cruise’s operations to lower spending by more than $1 billion annually.
On Tuesday, GM said in a press release that completed its acquisition of Cruise, making it a wholly owned subsidiary of GM.
The automaker will integrate Cruise technology into its own Super Cruise assisted driving system that is available on more than 20 GM vehicle models.
“By combining the specialized technology and talent at Cruise with our team developing Super Cruise, we’ll have the ability to accelerate our work on both assisted-driving and autonomous driving,” Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering at GM, said in the release.
GM laid off over 1,000 salaried employees in its software and services division in August. The division is focused on infotainment, OnStar, subscriptions and other emerging features.
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