TuSimple, an autonomous trucking technology company is planning to layoff several of its employees as early this week, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
(Photo : Alex Wong/Getty Images)
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JANUARY 03: Workers set up the TuSimple booth for CES 2022 at Las Vegas Convention Center January 3, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, is being held in person from January 5-7, with some companies deciding to participate virtually only or canceling altogether due to concerns over the recent surge in cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
The layoffs could potentially affect at least half of the company's workforce. However, according to TechCrunch, it might only be closer to 15 percent. Online forum members have their own speculations as well.
Layoff Talks Have Been Going On for Weeks
Talks of layoffs at the company have been ongoing for weeks, specifically by the end of the tech company's deal with Navistar to co-develop purpose-built autonomous semi trucks.
In addition to this, the company retrieved offers to interns and LinkedIn posts have also mentioned huge layoffs.
Currently, the company has over 1,000 full-time employees all over the world. Still, the number of employees who will be laid off are unknown. In addition, the news is not surprising as there are several tech companies that are downsizing due to the economic crisis, along with internal issues.
The layoffs might be from the teams that are responsible for co-building trucks with Navistar. There are also reports that the truck tech company is planning to replace Navistar with a new OEM partner.
Layoffs will start Tuesday, and the offices would be closed down Tuesday and Wednesday.
Also Read: Self-Driving Trucks are On the Horizon, Do they Pose a Threat to Truck Drivers?
Not the First Shakeup
This is not the first shakeup of the company this year. Earlier this year, CEO Cheng Lu was asked to step down into an advisory role, but took over again the company last month.
On the other hand, Xiaodi Hou, who was the founder of the company and his predecessor was fired after an internal probe was done, which showed that there were employees who have tied with Hydron, a hydrogen-powered trucking company. It's been found that these employees were sharing confidential information to Hydron.
Besides the internal issues the company faced this year, their stock price also took a dip with a significant drop of 95.63 percent from January. TuSimple also had to deal with the loss of investor confidence when one of its trucks crashed in April.
TuSimple struggled to recover from this that in April, the company reported $113 million in losses on revenue.
Scaling Back
Now, TuSimple is said to scale back building self-driving systems and testing autonomous trucks on public roads in Texas and Arizona. However, there is no clear information yet on what TuSimple's next move would be following what seems to be a tough year for business.
And with the imminent layoffs happening, there is no doubt that TuSimple is facing a lot of criticism today, not only from its investors from its employees as well.
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