Just weeks after Apple’s car project was scrapped triggering layoffs at the company, we now know that more than 700 of its employees are confirmed to be laid off, and the Apple Car wasn’t the only reason.
As originally reported by 9to5Mac, citing a WARN report from the California Employment Development Department, more than 700 employees were removed from a handful of central projects. The above report confirmed that “Apple is laying off 58 employees from one of its offices in Santa Clara”, which is associated with a team working on Micro-LED displays for the Apple Watch. This could suggest Apple is canceling the tech altogether with Bloomberg reporting something similar just last month.
Back in January, 121 layoffs were confirmed in San Diego, which are said to take effect on April 26. This is because the ‘Data Operations Annotations’ team is being shuttered and combined with the team in Austin. Previously, that team was responsible for logging Siri requests and slowly improving the service, as well as working on LLMs (large language models) for AI development.
As reported by Bloomberg, 371 employees were released at Apple’s main car-related office in Santa Clara, with even more said to be affected by the project closure.
What happens to those workers?
As is the case with the team in San Diego, workers were either told they could move to Austin to continue their role there or face redundancy. Those who opted to move were offered $7,000 for doing so. Apple has a good track record of offering other roles for those it lets go but this case is unique, as many were forced into moving a two-hour flight away.
The 9to5Mac report above claims that “Some of the engineers working on the Apple Car have been offered positions to work on AI-related features at Apple.” With over 2000 employees working on the Apple Car project before it was scrapped, it is unlikely Apple will have room for all those affected.
