Cruise announces layoffs as GM acquires defunct robotaxi company

Defunct robotaxi company Cruise has begun to lay off employees today, sources tell The Verge. The layoffs come two months after General Motors said it would no longer fund Cruise, and would instead shift its spending toward advanced driver assist and personally owned autonomous vehicles.

Cruise held an all-hands meeting today, in which it announced that GM had acquired full control of the company. A spokesperson for Cruise said 50 percent of the workforce will be laid off.

“We are grateful for their passion and contributions to help us reach this stage, and our focus is on supporting them into their next chapter with severance packages and career support,” Cruise spokesperson Sara Autio said in a statement. “While not an easy decision, we are focused on combining efforts with General Motors to accelerate autonomy at scale on personal autonomous vehicles.”

Cruise employees have spent the last few months in limbo, as senior leadership weighed plans on how to move forward. Last week, TechCrunch reported that Cruise began extending retention offers to some employees, most of whom are engineers. Those employees are expected to take jobs at GM, working on the automaker’s driver assist product, Super Cruise. The company’s board was expected to meet in early February to announce the status of the remaining workers, who are reported to number in the thousands.

GM CEO Mary Barra pulled the plug on Cruise in early December, arguing that a shared autonomous mobility service was never really in its “core business.” Cruise was too expensive and had too many regulatory hurdles to overcome to make it a viable revenue stream. Instead, GM would pivot to “privately owned” driverless cars.

“By combining the specialized technology and talent at Cruise with our team developing Super Cruise, we’ll have the ability to accelerate our work on both assisted-driving and autonomous driving,” Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering at GM, said in a statement. “We look forward to teaming with Cruise to accelerate our work together.” 

Just last week, Barra told investors that GM expects to save $1 billion annually by shutting down the service. “GM has proposed a restructuring plan that will refocus our autonomous driving strategy on personal vehicles,” Barra said.

Cruise has also begun to notify its customers about the shutdown of its robotaxi service. “We unfortunately will not be relaunching our ridehail service,” the message reads, according to a screenshot posted on X.

With additional reporting by Kylie Robison

Update February 4th: Cruise laid off 50 percent of its workforce, not 40 percent. A spokesperson for Cruise originally provided the incorrect figure.