Nuro Laid Off 20% of Staff
Softbank and Google backed autonomous vehicle startup Nuro wasn’t able to escape 2022 without hitting a major speedbump. On November 18, the company co-founders Jiajun Zhu and Dave Ferguson sent an email to their staff alerting them of layoffs impacting 20% of its staff , or around 300 people. In their email, the founders said they overestimated the extent to which positive economic growth conditions and investment in 2021 would continue long term. The founders said they mistakenly doubled the size of their team in less than two years and “significantly increased our operating expenses.”
The layoffs, according to Zhu and Ferguson, extends Nuro’s runway out to 2025 and will allow them the flexibility to weather any potential future economic downturn.
“With our newly extended 2025 runway we now have the resources—and renewed focus—to scale an incredible, efficient service for our partners, and be less distracted by noise in the market. And we’ll share more on this soon,” the founders wrote.
