Source: The Wall Street Journal
This week, Argo AI, the driverless car technology went on to lay off about 150 of its workers. This comes across as a reversal after years of what looked like fast paced hiring. These job cuts amount to around 6% of the startup’s entire workforce which is about 2,000 people strong. Notably, these details were specified by previous reports on the development.
The autonomous startup, based in Pittsburgh stated how it is going ahead with these layoffs in order to bring its staffing levels ‘in line.’ Mainly, they want to do so to reach their operational targets. Argo AI gave a statement regarding the job cuts this week. It stated how they were ‘making prudent adjustments’ to their business plan to appropriately go on a path that guarantees success. They noted how they are going ahead with this plan as they witnessed ‘incredible growth and progress ‘ in their aim for the deployment of ‘driverless vehicles.
“we are making prudent adjustments to our business plan to best continue on a path for success,”
Many prominent companies were seen to invest in this autonomous car startup. Initially, Ford made an investment of $1 billion in the company in the year 2017. On the other hand, Volkswagen AG made an investment of about $2.6 billion sometime after that. In 2021, retail giant Walmart worked with Argo AI, along with Ford to test an delivery service comprising autonomous vehicles in as much three cities in the US.
Moreover, the automobile company even went on to launch ride hailing, notably driverless, in the cities of Austin in Texas, along with Miami in Florida earlier in 2022. Alongside, Argo AI even carried out the testing of the service with human safety drivers behind the steering while. It offered the service through the ride hailing platform Lyft.
Moreover, the autonomous car startup is planning the installation of about 1,000 autonomous vehicle in this network in the coming few years. Notably, Argo AI has brought talent on board from big tech companies such as Uber Technologies and Apple Inc previously.
The company was founded by the former head of hardware development of autonomous vehicles at Google, Bryan Salesky. Along with it, was founded by engineering head for the self driving branch at Uber Technologies, Peter Rander. Bradley Caroll, spokesperson from Ford stated how Argo is one of its important partners in their self driving technology.
