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Nuro’s third technology, electrical autonomous car with no steering wheel. | Source: Nuro
Nuro, an autonomous car supply firm with deployments in California and Texas, laid off about 300 workers, or 20% of its employees, on Friday, in accordance with reporting from Tech Crunch.
The firm’s co-founders, Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson, despatched an e mail to workers Friday morning informing them of the layoffs and saying they’d obtain one other replace informing them if they’d be impacted.
Ferguson and Zhu advised workers that the layoffs had been the corporate’s try at preserving money amid a usually poor financial outlook. The founders took duty for the layoffs, stating the corporate overhired in 2021.
2021 was a giant yr for the corporate. In November, it introduced in a $600 million funding led by Tiger Global Management, placing the corporate at an $8.6 billion valuation. The spherical additionally included participation from Alphabet, Google’s mum or dad firm, and the mum or dad firm of Waymo, one other autonomous car firm. After the funding, Nuro doubled its crew in lower than two years.
Nuro had gained a number of traction in 2020 when it grew to become the primary U.S. autonomous car developer to be given exemptions by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for testing on public roads with no need controls for human operators. Later that yr, Nuro acquired a second allow to check the R2 on sure public roads in sections of 9 cities inside Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Since then, Nuro has labored with Domino’s, Walmart, FedEx, 7-Eleven, Kroger and Uber for numerous supply actions. But the corporate hasn’t been with out its challenges. Earlier this yr, it introduced it was laying off a handful of workers in Texas, California, and Arizona, and began winding down its Phoenix Depot operations.
In its newest spherical of layoffs, Nuro is providing the affected workers 12 weeks of severance pay, and as much as 14 weeks of severance pay for individuals who have been at Nuro for over two years. The firm can even pay out bonuses to eligible workers, waiving the one-year vesting cliff on the fairness entrance.
Nuro will subsidize 100% of COBRA healthcare premiums, together with for households, by way of March 31, 2023, for laid-off workers. The firm can be offering profession transition assist, and giving its Visa holders a discover interval to assist ease the transition.