Intrinsic, Alphabet Inc.’s industrial robotics company, slashed about one-fifth of its workforce Wednesday, as Google’s parent company starts what’s anticipated to be a large round of layoffs.
Intrinsic, which was launched in July 2021 after incubating at Google’s secretive research unit, X, for more than five years, said in a statement that layoffs impacted 40 people, or 17% its its workforce.
“Intrinsic’s leadership has made the difficult decision to let go a number of our team members,” an Intrinsic spokesperson said in a statement. “This decision was made in light of shifts in prioritization and our longer-term strategic direction.”
The cuts will “ensure Intrinsic can continue to allocate resources to our highest priority initiatives, such as building our software and AI platform, integrating the recent strategic acquisitions of Vicarious and OSRC (commercial arm Open Robotics),” the spokesperson said.
The Information first reported the layoffs.
Earlier Wednesday, Alphabet’s healthcare unit Verily Life Sciences cut more than 200 jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal.
In November, The Information reported Alphabet was considering cutting about 10,000 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce. Alphabet has not publicly confirmed that figure.
Alphabet’s Class C
GOOG,
and Class A shares
GOOGL,
are down 35% over the past 12 months, compared to the S&P 500’s
SPX,
16% decline.