Autonomous vehicle company Cruise is laying off 50% of its workforce — cuts that extend to the CEO and several other top executives — as it prepares to shut down operations. What remains of Cruise will move under parent company General Motors as the automaker directs its resources towards improving its hands-free driver assistance system Super Cruise — and eventually rolls out personal autonomous vehicles.
The layoffs were announced by Craig Glidden, Cruise’s president and chief administrative officer, according to a companywide email that TechCrunch has viewed and verified with sources. Individuals who were affected received a separate email from Cruise Chief Human Resources Officer Nilka Thomas.
The layoffs come nearly two months after GM said it would no longer fund the development of a commercial robotaxi business and would instead focus on building personal autonomous vehicle technology.
CEO Marc Whitten will depart from Cruise this week, along with Thomas, chief safety officer Steve Kenner, and global head of public policy Rob Grant.
Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s chief technologist, will stay on through the end of April to help with the transition.
As of January 2024, Cruise employed about 2,100 people, according to sources who based the estimates on the on the number of members on a Slack channel for company announcements. That means more than 1,000 employees might have been impacted by the layoffs.
Cruise did not respond to a request for comment. GM sent out a press release (after the layoffs were announced internally) that it has completed its acquisition of GM Cruise Holdings LLC following the approval of GM’s merger offer by the Cruise Board of Directors. Cruise is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of GM.
Sources at the company told TechCrunch they haven’t been given details on severance yet, but per an email from Thomas, they will remain on the company’s payroll through April 5 and benefits through the end of April.
The automaker expects to save up to $1 billion annually by ending its Cruise robotaxi development program., according to details shared during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. At the time, CFO Paul Jacobson said the projected cost savings were based on the assumption that “Cruise employees will be fully integrated into GM by mid-year.”
In mid-January, Cruise management started to extend retention offers to employees, almost all of whom were engineers, according to sources familiar with the matter. In an email to Cruise employees, CEO Marc Whitten indicated that next steps would come after the Cruise board met. That meeting happened on Monday, according to one source.
While Cruise employees were initially blindsided by GM’s decision to pull the plug on the robotaxi development program, they have been expecting such an announcement for weeks.
Sources who spoke to TechCrunch said they have been hardly working and in a state of limbo since GM’s announcement as they awaited next steps. On Monday afternoon, Glidden sent a Slack message to employees saying that he expects to share “some news regarding the transition plans tomorrow” and advised staffers to “plan on working from home.”
“Thank you for your patience during this time – we know the uncertainty has been difficult but you have navigated the past weeks with grace and professionalism,” Glidden wrote.
Glidden had previously served as GM’s executive vice president of legal and policy, but the automaker assigned him his role at Cruise in November 2023, following a Cruise safety incident that led to the company’s downfall.
On October 2, 2023, a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian who had been flung into its path by a human-driven vehicle. The robotaxi then dragged the pedestrian, who was stuck under the car, some 20 feet as it attempted a pullover maneuver.
Cruise officials did not immediately share that relevant bit of information with authorities, and when it was revealed, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Utilities Commission immediately suspended the company’s permits to operate. Cruise then grounded its entire robotaxi fleet across the U.S., and much of its leadership team stepped down, including co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt.
After installing new leadership, including a permanent Chief Safety Officer, Cruise was gearing up for a relaunch at the start of this year in Austin. The company had spent much of 2024 testing in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, and the Bay Area and beefing out its safety systems. Two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch the company had been ready to implement a retrofitted sensor solution internally referred to as Project Rhino that would have solved for the October 2 incident by creating additional visibility and awareness underneath the car.
In June 2024, GM injected another $850 million into Cruise, bringing its total spend on the company since acquiring most of Cruise’s shares in 2016 close to $10 billion. In September, Mo Elshenawy, president and chief technologist of Cruise, threw a huge party for Cruise staffers that some read to be a sign that the company was moving forward.
This story is developing …
