San Francisco’s embattled Cruise slashes staff by 24%, laying off hundreds

Cruise is laying off almost a fourth of its workforce, the San Francisco-based autonomous car company said Thursday. 

The embattled startup’s president and chief technology officer, Mo Elshenawy, announced the 900-person layoff in an email to staff now published on Cruise’s website. He detailed the 24% layoff round alongside drastically pared-back plans for the company’s future.

It’s been a horrible two and a half months for Cruise. On Oct. 2, one of the company’s driverless cars dragged a San Francisco pedestrian 20 feet after she’d been knocked over by another vehicle. Then, on Oct. 24, the California DMV revoked Cruise’s main permits and accused the company of withholding part of the video footage of the crash. 

Two days later, Cruise voluntarily halted its nationwide driverless car testing. Federal and state regulators are investigating the company while its leadership attempts to “rebuild public trust.”

The developments are a dramatic reversal from Cruise’s full-speed ahead approach to rolling out its fleet earlier in 2023. Just a month before the Oct. 2 crash, co-founder Kyle Vogt was calling criticism of autonomous cars “sensationalized” and advocating for a future where driverless cars would be the default mode of transit in San Francisco. 

Vogt resigned from Cruise’s CEO job on Nov. 19, and on Wednesday, the company ousted nine other higher-ups, “following an initial analysis of the October 2 incident and Cruise’s response to it,” spokesperson Sara Autio told SFGATE. The cuts included “key leaders from Legal, Government Affairs, and Commercial Operations, as well as Safety and Systems,” Autio added. Plans to expand into a dozen more cities in 2024 also have been abandoned.

Elshenawy and Craig Glidden, a longtime lawyer at Cruise parent General Motors, took over as co-presidents after Vogt’s departure. 

In his email, Elshenawy said the employee cuts are mainly in operations, but will also affect some engineering and tech workers. He said the company will focus on “exceptional service in one city to start with” and focus on improving its Bolt vehicles before expanding; GM’s Bolt cars are the autonomous vehicles Cruise has been testing in San Francisco.

Autio declined to comment on where the “one city” for service will be. In a statement, she said layoffs reflect Cruise’s “more deliberate commercialization plans.”

The hundreds of laid-off Cruise workers will receive generous exit packages; in his email, Elshenawy promised about 16 weeks of pay, at a minimum, and said the company will still hand out 2023 bonuses. 

Hear of anything happening at Cruise or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.